MEMOIR, f,^ 

'ITZf 



READ BEFORE 



THE HISTORICAL SOCIETI^ 



OF THE 



STATE OF XTE-Vtr-VORX, 



DECEMBER 31, 1816. 



BY EGBERT BENSON. 



Cui (viuscoe) nomen asilo 

ilomanum est, oestron Graii vertere vocantes. — Vir^. 



SEGONS EDITION — WITH NOTUS. 



JAMAICA: 

HENRY C. SLEIGHT, PRINTER. 

1825. 



MEMOIR 



1 HE subject of this Memoir, if so it may be termed, 
will be NAMES ; chiefly names of places, and farther 
restricted to places in that portion of our country, 
once held and claimed by the Dutch by right of dis- 
covery, and by them named New Netherland; to he 
described, generally, as bounded on the east by the 
Connecticut, and on the west by the Delaware, and a 
space m breadth, adjacent to the farther bank of each, 
the extent of it not now to be ascertained, but, doubt- 
less, as far as was judged needful to secure the exclu- 
sive use of the rivers. 

Held by right of discovery— 2. right gravely ques- 
tioned by some, and furnishing matter for wit and 
pleasantry to others ; because, with deference to both, 
not justly apprehended by either. An understood 
conventional law between the maritime nations of 
Europe, to prevent interferences otherwise to be 
apprehended, that the discovery of territory should 
enure to the benefit of the sovereign by whose sub- 
jects made. The benefit, where the territory inha- 
bited, a right, in exclusion of other sovereigns and 
their subjects, to purchase, from the uncivihzed occu- 
pants, the SOIL ; their right to which, recognised by 
the Dutch in the first instance, and afterward bv the 



English on the surrender of the colony to (hem, 16G4. 
and ever regarded by both with the best faith. No 
grant to their own people without a previous Indian 
purchase, as it was termed — no purchase without a 
previous license for it — the sale under the superintend- 
ence of an authorised magistracy, in quahty as guar- 
dians for the Indians ; and hence, complaints from 
them of injury, either from their own mistakes, or 
from imposition in the purchasers, rare, notwithstand- 
ing we meet with a part of the consideration not 
more definitely expressed, than as consisting of " some 
handsful of powder, "^"^ 

If asked, whence the inducement in selecting the 
subject, a mere research, furnishing httle to please, 
perhaps less to instruct ? My answer will simply be, 
that nothing relative to the history of country — the 
soil that gave hirth — " the place of our father's se- 
pulchres'''^ — '^ the paternal seats, our unceasing desire 
it may be granted us ourselves to die there," — ^^vas 
never with others, and I trust will never be with us, 
wholly uninteresting. The English, when speaking 
of their country, call \t England ^ when speaking of 
it, with emphasis or emotion, at times. Old England ; 
still only its name on the map — the Dutch, when 
•speaking of their country, always by a name peculiai* 
to themselves, Het Vaderlandt, the Father Land, 

The order to be observed, will be generally the 
]Mimitive Indian, and the subsequently successive 
Spanish, Dutch, and English, names. 

As authorities,* among others, a reference will be 

* Pee Note III 



imderstoocl to be to the Theatrum Terrarum Orbi> 
of Ortelius, surnamed the Ptolemy of his time, pub- 
lished 1572; the Niewee Werldt, cATeiy World, ot" 
De Laet, pubhshed in 1625, and the same work in 
Latin, published in 1633; the Beschryvinge Van 
NiEUWE Nederlandt, Description of New Nether- 
land, by Van Der Donck, after a residence here of 
some years, pubhshed in 1656 ; and the Brandende 
Veen, a burning pile of turf , a collection of seacharts. 
with notes by iJo^^ereeii, published in 1675; all ol 
them, it must be admitted, imperfect, and in very 
many instances, erroneous, but probably not more so 
than others, who, at the same period, attempted the 
geography, and to borrow the appellation just cited., 
of this, to them, Nezv World ; from necessity, how- 
ever, those named must serve as guides, aware, at the 
same time, that while we follow, there must still be a 
reliance on our own circumspection, 

INDIAN NAMES. 

It may be a question, whether the Indians had 
general names for large tracts of country ? The five 
nations, or, as heretofore, not unusually distinguished 
by us, our Indians as residing within our jurisdic- 
tion, the Mohocks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the 
Cayugas, and the Senecas, had no general name for 
their domain, or the parts of it, although separated 
by duly definite limits, the distinct property of each. 
The. extensive, and, as relatively to them, south and 
southwestern region, including, at least, a portion of 
the Carolinas, they designated by referring to their 



8 

general name for its inhabitants, the country of tht 
Flat-Heads. They waged war with them, and it 
Avould seem implacably so. Returning home from 
one of their expeditions, they brought otT, to replace 
those lost among themselves in their fights, a whole 
people, the Tuscaroras, incorporating them into their 
confederacy as the sixth nation, and assigning them 
lands for residence, but withholding the power oi 
alienation. 

On the other hand, there is abundant reason to be- 
lieve, that, inlayidj every distinct space, scarcely more 
extensive than a neighbourhood, and, on the coast, every 
river, bay, and cape, and every island, its contents not 
more than to serve as the abode of a single tribe, had a 
distinct name. Of the places on the coast, Tybee, 
Ocracock, Hateras, Roanoke, Currituck, Chesapeake, 
Chingoteague, Squan, Nevesink, Rockaway, Nan- 
tucket, with its secondary Muskegut, are those only 
^till known to our mariners by their Indian names. 

Montock, it is true, is Indian, but the appropriation 
of it, as a name for the extreme eastern point of 
Long-Island, is by the English, and probably since the 
reign of Queen Anne, the point appearing on a chart 
of the coast, dedicated to her son the Duke of Glou- 
cester, without a name. It is the name of a peninsula 
denoted in a petition to the government in 1680, for a 
license to purchase it from the Indians, " as a tract 
eastward of Easthampton, called Montauck ;" and we 
find it at the same period called Montaukett, and its 
sachem formally claiming before the governor and 
council, a right, and as by conquest, to sell the lands as 
far west as Matinicock. The peninsula is within thr 



9 

limits of the town of Easthampton ; the whiles, the 
appellation generally in use with us, when intending 
to distinguish between ourselves and the Indians, 
exercising only a modified right of property, the right 
of pasturage; the remnant of Indians still there, en- 
joying the exclusive right of culture. The tribe was 
known as the Mattozvas, or Mattowaks, or Mattouwax, 
all of w^hich, however ditferentlj spelt or pronounced 
by the whites, doubtless purport the same name ; but 
whether the tribe took their name from the place, or 
the place took its name from the tribe, is a question 
from which it behooves me to refrain. As of Dutch 
descent, I ought ever to have before me the n^arning 
from the ^^ mighty contests^'''' in the parent country of 
my family, on the question whether the hook catches 
the fish, or the fish the hook, and the parties accord- 
ingly distinguished as the Hoecks, and the Cabel jaus, 
the Hooks, and the Cods. 

The immediate neighbours to this tribe were the 
Shinnicocks^ v/ho, and aiso at an early period, pre- 
sented a sachem elect to the governor for his appro- 
bation ; a sohtary instance. At a treaty with the 
Oneidas, at Fort Schuyler, in 1788, they presented 
to the commissioners a lad, made a sachem the day 
before, and Skonondo, a respectable individual among 
them, as the guardian during his minority. The in- 
tent of the one ceremonial, the making a sachem, as 
furnishing an occasion for the other, the announcing 
it being understood, the keg of rum, the expected com- 
pliment in return, was not withheld. 

From the mere suggestion by the Montauck Indians 
of a claim, by conquest, to the whole of the territory 
2* 



10 

between their home and Mattinicock, we are led to 
suppose they were numerous and powerful, the natu- 
ral consequence a pre-eminence, and thereby their 
name in time becoming the general or national name 
for the Indians throughout the whole island. It was 
usual with the Dutch to speak of the maquaas, and 
the English afterward by the name, as pronounced 
by them, the Mohocks^ intending at the same time the 
whole confederacy. Our historian expresses himself, 
in the tBxt^ "all the Indians on Long-Island were in 
subjection to i\\efive nations, and acknowledged it by 
the payment of an annual tribute,'' and concludes a 
note on the passage, that the tribute still continued to 
be paid to the Mohocks, Indeed, it is well known that 
Mohock was the standing bugbear, with the matron- 
squaws on the island to /n^^^en their unquiet children, 
when losing their patience with them. 

Nayack — The name of a place at the Narrows, on 
the Long-Island side : In the grant to Corlelyaxi, 
1671, the land is described "as to begin at the point 
oi Nayack, and to stretch along the bay," and hence 
Nicolls, who commanded the armament sent against 
the Dutch here, dates his summons of surrender to 
the town, " on board his Majesty's ship the Guyney, 
riding before Nayack." The lands, the western 
bank of the river, for a few miles northward from the 
Tappan meadows, known by the same name, Nayack. 
The bay, between the geele, ye lloiv, and the roode. 
rrd. Hook, still retains its Indian name, Gazuanns. 



11 



LNDIAN NAMES OF PLACES— INLAND. 

Our island of Manhattan^ or as pronounced by i\\v 
Dutch, and spelt by the whites of New-England, and 
both prefixing the article^ the Manhadoes ;* and the 
like observed by Stuyvesant in his answer to the sum- 
mons to surrender, " the Manhattans," and in the arti- 
cles of capitulation, signed at the governor's Bou- 
WERIE, Farm, still in the family, the road or lane lead- 
ing to it, known as the Bouweriesche Laening, cor- 
rupted to Boxoery-Lane, now Bowery -Street, the town 
and the inhabitants are mentioned as the " town of 
Manhattans," "the town of ^/le Manhattoes," "the 
townsmen of the Manhattans." 

A marsh or swamp extended across the island, from 
between where Canal-street terminates at the North 
river and the space of the shore of the East river, the 
portion of Cherry-street between James and Catha- 
rine streets. Cherry-street, so called from being laid 
through a public garden, with a bowling-green in it, 
called Cherry-Garden, having a front on the East 
river of 384 feet, and extending in the rear to the 
meadow of Wolvert Webbers, the property of Rich- 
ard Sacket, Malster ; the western side of his malt- 
house the line of the eastern side of Roosevelt-street 
there. James-street, called after Jacobus, James, 
Roosevelt, and Catharine-street, after Catharine, the 
wife of Hendrick Rutgers, proprietors, at the time, of 
the grounds through which they were laid. 

There was a large pond, or Kolck, in the marsh 

"^ See Note IV. 



12 

about midway between Broadway and Chatham-street, 
and a stream, or '' rivulet^^'^ from it, running eastward, 
and crossing Chatham-street, between Pearl and Roose- 
velt streets, and there a bridge over it. The English 
pronounced the word Kolck, as if consisting of two 
syllables, Kol-lick, and the waters from the adjacent 
high grounds collecting in it, an etymologist, not long 
since, chose to imagine the true original name to have 
been an English one, Collect ; and, the pond having 
lately been filled up, thence the name of a street pass- 
ing over the space it occupied, Co//ec/-street. The 
pond, besides being referred to very generally as 
emphatically the Kolck, was distinguished by the 
appellation of the Versche Water, F7'esh Water, and 
which was also at times applied to the stream. A part 
of the description of a piece of land, in an ancient 
conveyance, is " being beyond the Fresh Water,'''' and 
then farther denoted by its Indian name, Warpoes, 
Also a piece of land on the north side of the island 
Manhattans, called by the Indians, Muscoote, The 
Indian name for the grounds now known as Grcenzvich, 
the name given to the place by Captain, afterward 
Sir Peter, Warren, when on the station here, and 
purchasing them, was Sapokanikan, and, in like man- 
ner, as Manhadoes, retained in use by the Dutch, and 
spoken of as a distinct place, so that the skippers 
when, in coming down the river, they had turned Sa- 
pokanikan Vomi, would express themselves, ''they 
were in sigjht of Manhadoes.'^'' The Indian name for 
the extreme southern point of the island, to be con- 
sidered as the point on the shore dividing between tht; 
wat<*r^ of the two rivers, was Kap'se ; and also in 



13 

tamiliar use with the skippers, when intending to 
mention, with some precision, the time at which they 
passed from the one river into the other. From those 
of the above circumstances having relation to Indian 
names, and perhaps the passage from De Laet, to be 
instantly cited, also considered, may not the conjec- 
ture be hazarded, that Manhattans^ or Manhadoes, 
was the name of a tribe of Indians, and the peninsula, 
on the hither side of the Fresh Water, their exclusive 
or separate place of abode ? 

Our river — " The great river of New Nether- 
land," says De Laet, " is by some called Manhattes, 
after the nation of Indians who dwell near, or at, the 
beginning or mouth of it." This is no otherwise giving 
the name of the river, than by referring to the name 
of the tribe of Indians at its mouth. 

The Sieur Des Monts led a colony from France, in 
1604. He entered the Bay of Fundy, thence there- 
after at times known as French Bay ; visited a harbour 
which he called Port Royal, now Annapolis; and 
afterward making the circuit of the bay, and re- 
turning along the western shore, came to a river the 
24th June, and it being the festival of the Baptist, 
gave it the name of St. John, Sailing farther west- 
ward, he entered the Bay of Passamaquoddy, and 
landed on an island in a river emptying into the bay, 
and gave it the name of St, Croix, There will be a 
reference in the sequel to the history of these colo- 
nists, as furnished by L'Escarbot, who was there two 
years thereafter ; it will be here only farther mention- 
ed, that of the whole number, seventy-nine persons, 
thirty-five died during the winter, of the scurvy, 



14 

>poken of as a disease not known before, and, as It 
would seem, attributed to the extreme coldness of the 
climate. " From April to the middle of December,'* 
says Champlain, in De Laet, " the air of Canada i? 
healthy, but January, February, March, are unhealthy, 
and you are then severely afflicted with the scurvy.'' 
He came out with Des Monts as his geographer, and 
went afterward to Canada, and probably the tirst who 
explored the lake still bearing his name. In the ac- 
count of the voyage, as taken from his own publica- 
tion of it, speaking of the river in the Bay of Passama- 
quoddy, he calls it the river of the Etchemins ; in like 
manner with De Laet, designating it by referring to 
the name of the tribe of hidians inhabiting its banks, 
it having, but of which he was not informed at the 
time, an Indian name, the Scudiac. 

The Indian name of our river is Sha-te-muc, Here, 
however, not having general tradition, or written docu- 
ment, to warrant me, it is proper 1 should state, and 
so submit, my authority. 

In 1 785, 1 met with a person of the name of Rouw : 
his parents were of the German families, who came 
over in 1710, under the protection, and at the expense 
of Queen Anne, and settled on a tract of six thousand 
acres, within the limits of the Manor of Livingston, 
heretofore known as the German Camp, now German 
Tow7i, purchased for them, it being intended they 
should raise hemp, and, the pine then abounding in 
the vicinity, make tar, for the use of the navy. In 
the conversation with him, he told me his father, at a 
very early day, parted with his farm in the Camp, and 
took a lease for one, from the proprietor of the Ma- 



15 

nor. at a place called, by the Indians, Stissinck, about 
twelve miles from the river ; that the family were, as 
it respected white neighbours, for a long time, almost 
solitary; that their chief intercourse was w^th the 
Indians, who were still numerous there ; that the In- 
dian boys were his play-fellows, so that, as he grew 
up, the Indian became as familiar to him as the Ger- 
man, the language of the family. Among other in- 
quiries, I asked him if he knew the Indian name of 
the river? He replied, he did; it was Sha-te-muc» 
With a view to ascertain w^hether he was not repeat- 
ing only individual hearsay, I asked him how he came 
by the know^ledge of the name ? He rephed, it was 
always called so by the Indians ; that, when going to, 
or coming from, the river, they w^ould say they w^ere 
going to, or had come from, Sha-te-muc ; in short, that 
he had come to the knowledge of the Indian name for 
it, in the same manner he had come to the knowledge 
of the name by which it was known by the whites, 
the North River, I then mentioned, that, possibly, it 
was the name for a portion of it, a reach in it, there ; 
he replied, it was usual with him, when a young man, 
and the deer scarce in the Tackhanick mountains in 
the neighbourhood, to go and hunt w^ith the Wiccapec 
Indians in the Highlands^ and the river was known to 
them by the same name. I was a stranger to him 
personally ; but when I resided at Red-Hook, in 
Dutchess County, at a previous period, I knew seve- 
ral of the family, and they w^ere respectable ; his re- 
collection and judgment were entire, his appearance 
decent, and his deportment proper. I might have 
saved myself the necessity of the surmise to him. thtit 



16 

possibly it was only the name of a portion of the rivei'. 
had it occurred to me, that the Indians, using the 
same language, have the same name for a river 
throughout its whole length. An Indian meeting a 
white man on the confines of Canada, asked him 
where he came from ? He told him from Connecticut 
river ; the Indian, instantly extending his arms late- 
rally from him to the utmost stretch, as the expressive 
gesture, repeated the name Connecticoota, adding its 
meaning. Long River, 

Croton River — supposed to be the mispelling of 
the name of an Indian, probably the proprietor of the 
lands at the mouth of it, as we find it, in very early 
documents, in the genitive, Croton's River. In an 
Indian deed, 1685, the river is called Kitchazvmi, and 
the lands adjacent to it, on the south, Sincksinck, 

Schenectady — A tract within the limits of the Co- 
j.ONiE or JuRisDicTiE of Rensselaerwyck, extend- 
ing from the river in a northwestern direction, a mile 
in breadth, was formed by the Dutch government into 
a separate Jurisdiction, known as the Jurisdiction of 
Schenectady^ the name of the five nations, for the site 
of the only settlement, at the time, within it, the 
Dorp, or village of Beverwyck, on the bank of the 
river, and its meaning on the further side of the pint 
wood, denoting its situation relatively to them. The 
license from Stuyvesant to Van Curler and his asso- 
ciates, to purchase the lands, described in it, as " the 
well known Flatt lying behind the Fort Orange, land- 
ward in," is dated in 1661. The term Flatt has 
obtained among us as a translation of the Dutch 
Vlachte, when used to denote lau,ds on a river bv 



17 

alluvion. This Flatt was, at the time, distinguished 
by the Dutch as the Groote, or Great^ Vlachte. 
The Indian name for it, Oronowaragouhre, It was 
instantly settled by the whites, and their village con- 
sidered as within the Jurisdiction of Schenectady. 
Nicolls, very shortly after the surrender of the colony, 
erected the Jurisdiction into a city, giving it the name 
of Albany^ after the Scotch title of the Duke of York, 
but restricting its western extent to sixteen miles from 
the river; the residue however, and especially as it 
regarded the settlement at the Gr-eat Flatt, whicli 
would otherwise, if so to be expressed, have become 
extraparochial, was considered as still subsisting as a 
Jurisdiction, and no new one being assigned to it, the 
name of Schenectady of course continued to be used : 
and the Schout or Sheriff as still in office ; and at the 
moment happening to reside there, we accordingly 
fmd the following entry in the minutes of the Council, 
15th October, 1675, "Sanders Leenderts Glen, and 
Ludovicus Cobez, Schout of Schenectady, appeared 
with a request from their village for a patent. Or- 
dered, that they have a patent for the land about and 
above Schenectady. The Bowerys, or Farms, at 
Schenectady, are to pay for each of them, containing 
twenty morgan, and in proportion, four bushels oi 
wheat, as a quitrent. The magistrates of Schenec- 
tady to have liberty to impose a levy ;" and thus the 
name was transferred from the Schenectady of the five 
nations to their Oronowaragouhre, 

Nachicnack — The Indian name for the point of 
land, the site of the village of Waterford, and sold at 
an early day, and the grantees denoted ia the deed, 

3 



by the names of Gozen Gerritse, and Philip Pk- 
TERSE, the last syllable, se, an abbreviation of sen. 
varied from zoon, son, the Christian name of the fa^ 
therof theone being Gerrit, and of the other, Peter. 
and their surnames, Van Schaick and Van Schuy- 
ler. Taking this species of Patronymic^ and using 
it as a surname, a practice our Dutch ancestors 
brought over with them, and it has now, in some fami- 
lies, become the permanent surname : Instances — 
the Myndertses, the descendants of Myndert Van 
Everen ; the LEFFERTSEs,of Leffert Van Haage- 
wouT ; the Martenses, of Martin Schenck ; the 
RiKERTSES, abbreviated to Riker, of Rikert Lent : 
the Remsens, of Rembrandt, abbreviated to Rem. 
Van Der Beek, — with some the English son, as be- 
ing of the same import, has been substituted for the 
Dutch sen : Instances — the Johnsons of King's and 
Ulster counties ; the Gei-ritsons ; the Everisons ; the 
Bensons ; — with a number of our Dutch families, (he 
preposition Van, of, as a part of the surname, has 
gone into disuse : Instances — the Van Ten Broecks, 
the Van Gansevoorts, the Van Varicks, the Van 
KouwENHOVENS, and in the family of Philip Petersk 
Van Schuyler, already named, the use of it proba- 
bly ceasing with him, as it does not appear to have 
been used even by his son, Major Peter Schuyler, "dis- 
tinguished," says our historian, "for his singular bra- 
very and activity in the defence of his country. In 
Ihe summer of 1691, he, with a parly of Mohocks, 
passed through the Lake Champlain, and made an 
irruption on the French settlements at the north end 
of it. Dt Callieres, the Governor of Montreal, to 



19 

oppose him, collected a small army of eight hundred 
men, and encamped at La Prarie, Schuyler had 
several conflicts with the enemy, and slew about thre( 
hundred of them, which exceeded in number his 
whole party ; he succeeded to the influence and ho- 
nours of Van Curler. Whatever he recommended 
or disapproved, had the force of a law with the five 
nations ; and they afterward addressed the Governor 
of the Colony by the title of Gorah Quider, instead 
of Peter, which they could not pronounce. Governor 
Peter." The nick-name formerly much in use with 
the Dutch here : Instances — the residence of Jak 
RooDHAER, a little freely translated Foxy-head John, 
referred to in a grant, his name, though somewhat an- 
glicised in spelling. Van Salisbury ; a grant to Ja- 
cob Flodder, Jacob Rafter, his occupation on the 
river, his name Gardinier. Vader Kees, Father 
Cornelius, the plaintiff in a suit, his name Jansen. A 
few famihes, descended from clergymen, still using the 
surname as Latinised by their classical progenitors : 
Instances — Goetius, Polhemius, Curtenius, Man- 

CIUS, BOGARDUS. 

Our names for the five nations, are not their names 
in their own language ; they are the names by which 
the Indians inhabiting the banks of the river, the Mo- 
hegans, or, as pronounced by the Dutch, Mahik An- 
ders, denote them, and being those first communica- 
ted to the whites, they have retained them in use : 
Their names, in their own language, are, the Mohocks, 
Te-ka-te-righ-te-^o-ne, Council of two Bands, alluding 
to the two clans, or castles, of them, the one at Fort 
Hunter, so called after Governor Hunter, the other m 



20 

Fort Hendrick, so called after their distinguished chieC 
usually known as King Hendrick, who fell in the bat- 
tle at Lake George, 1755; the Oneidas, Ni-ho-ron-ta- 
o-o-wa, a great tree ; the Onondagas^ Ro-tigh-re-a-na- 
gigh-tSi, carrying their houses on their hacks ; the Cay- 
ygas, Sho-ti-non-no-wen-te-zyee-ne, the great pipe : 
and the Senecas, Ya-te-ho-ni-non-hagh-Aon-te, the 
people at the end of the house, A pecuharity to be 
noticed in these names, dwelling on the penidtimatt 
syllable : A few farther instances — names of places — 
Mo-non-ga-/ie-]a, Wa-ma-na-pa-^wa-sick, Ca-nes-ti- 
gi-r<-ne. ^2iXneso{ persons — An-na-ta-A;«i<-les, a taker 
of towns, the name of the Five Nations for General 
Washington; Ta-ha-ne-ye-a-ta-A:aw-ye, ancient his 
legs, their name for General Schuyler — I have pla- 
ced thee, my friend, by the side of him who knew 
thee, thy intelligence to discern, thy zeal to promote, 
thy country's good, and, knowing thee, prized thee. 
Let this be thy eulogy. I add, and with truth, pecu- 
liarly thine. Content, it should be mine to have ex- 
pressed it. 

There will be a farther occasional mention of In- 
dian names in the sequel. 

SPANISH NAMES OF PLACES. 

The Spaniards were the first Europeans who gave 
names to places on our coast. There w^ere upward? 
of thirty in number, between Cape Florida and Capo 
Cod. Florida itself, and St. Augustine, St. Lucia. 
Caneveral, St. Juan, Matanzas, and Roman, or more 
properly Romana, only are found on the charts of the 



21 

present day. A few of the others will be noticed. A 
Cape is laid down as in latitude 36, with the name of 
Trafalgar, and was subsequently farther denoted by 
the Dutch as the southern point of Virginia on the 
Ocean. They named the Chesapeake the Bay of the 
Mother of God ; the Delaware, the Bay of All Saints ; 
and the Hudson, the River of the Mountains, 

Who the Spanish voyagers were, and whether the 
same who gave the name of Campo Bello to an island 
in the Bay of Fundy, or of Tremont to the Peninsula 
of Boston, from the three eminences in it, cannot now 
be ascertained, at least not without more research 
than the success of it would recompense. There is 
no trace of their having landed in our vicinity. In- 
deed, according to Van Der Donck, it is scarcely to 
be believed their ships were even in sight from the 
shore. "This country," he says, "was first found 
and discovered by the Dutch, in 1609, when a ship, 
the Half Moon, was fitted out by the East India Com- 
pany, to seek westward for a passage through to China. 
Henry Hudson was the master and supercargo ; an 
Enghshman by birth, but who had long abode among 
the Netherlanders, and then in the service and pay of 
the East India Company. That it was first discover- 
ed by the Netherlanders is evident from this, that the 
Indians, or Natives, of whom there are many still 
living, and so old as to remember it, declare, that be- 
fore the arrival of the ship Half Moon, they did not 
know there were any other people in the world so un- 
like them as being more hairy, much less so far other- 
M'ise dificring from them in kind and fashion, as our 
3* 



22 

nation. There arc some who maintain tliat the 
Spaniards were in this country many years before, 
but, finding it too cold, left it ; but I could never un- 
derstand so from the Indians." 

Notwithstanding what Van Der Donck here relates, 
I cannot forbear from the conjecture that they ap- 
proached so near as distinctly to discern the opening. 
the Narrows^ and concluding it to be the entrance into 
a river, and Nevesinck and Staten Island being the 
only land on the coast apparently moiintaitioKs, thence 
the name, the River of the Mountains ; for although 1 
give the passage entire from him, I am not therefore 
to be understood as giving it unqualified credit. He 
was a Dutchman, and doubtless penned the passage 
in asseveration of their title to the river as the first 
discoverers of it ; and it does not require an atten- 
dance of a whole half century on courts of justice to 
learn, that where interest, or wish, or not less ill^than 
good will, or even only the vanity of narrating, to 
show we know something not known to others, or the 
absence of heed, or any other of the varieties ef hu- 
man frailty, there how sparing of belief. 

To a point now known as Sandi/ or Monemy Pointy a 
point on the hither shore of the peninsula of Cape Cod. 
they gave the name of Cape Mallebarre, The Dutch 
called it Ongelukige Haven, Unlucky Harbour^ pro- 
bably intended as a translation of the Spanish name. 
The name Mallebarre had ceased to be known until 
the hearing before the commissioners in 1798, to de- 
termine the River St. Croix, intended in the treaty of 
peace which closed the war of the Revolution, wheY) 



23 

L'Escarbot being read in proof, and he mentioning- 
it, the knowledge of it was revived, and it has since- 
found its place on the Charts of the Coast of Massa- 
chusetts. 

It will be recollected, that we have spoken of the 
^ oyage of Sieur des Monts in an attempt to plant a 
colony, of his landing on the Island of St. Croix, and 
the loss of a number of his followers by death during 
the winter : the history of the survivors is briefly re- 
lated in the following extract from L'Escarbot, and 
to which we have alluded. " The season being pass- 
ed, the Sieur Des Monts, tired of his sorrowful abode 
at St. Croix, determined to search for another port 
in a country more warm and more to the south ; and 
having seen the coast of Mallebarre, and with much 
labour, and not finding what he desired, he deter- 
mined to go to Port Royal, to make his stay there, 
and wait until he should have the means to make a 
more ample discovery." The French permitted to 
come as far as Mallebarre,* and then, instead of land- 
ing to abide there, or pursuing their voyage farther, 
rhey are to discern it as more eligible to return to 
Port Royal. What a Providence ! Continuing their 
rourse westward a few leagues farther, would have 
discovered to them the Bay of Nassau of the Dutch, 
with the Garden Island, the Aquiday of the Indians, 
the Rhode-Island of the English, in its bosom, its west- 
ern coast the country of the Narragansetts^ the Land 
of Pasturage, the Land of Milk. What might not 
have been now the condition of these our happy re- 

'■^- S'ee Note \ . 



24 

oions, "if we knew it," had they been peopled b} 
French instead of Enghsh colonists ! Our free fornos 
of Government ; next to the revelation of hinnself, the 
])est gift from the Deity to man during his stay here ! 
When the present Constitution* was vouchsafed us, 
the Representatives of the nation, peculiarly so deno- 
minated, in their Address, to the Most beloved Citi- 
zen, What an appellation ! With what hearts bestow- 
ed ! in answer to his speech to the Congress, at the 
opening of the Session, avowed " the responsibility on 
us for the destiny of Republican Liberty, '^^ We select- 
ed and reserved on whom the ultimate hope for Man. 
whether capable of a free Government, a Govern- 
ment elective throughout, a self Government, a Go- 
vernment, the administrations of it, for their rectitude, 
and otherwise for their wisdom, depending on his own 
volitions, his own prudence, the latter taken as imply- 
ing " the constant presence of Deity with us," is to 
rest! Should we succeed to fulfil it, and would il 
were not possible we should not, what of national Re- 
proach must we not, in the course of the Probation. 
have escaped, what of national Exaltation shall wc 
not have obtained ! 

DUTCH NAMES OF PLACES 

The Dutch called the Delaware the South, and the 
Hudson the ^orth, River, from their relative situation 
to each other. They appear also to have been known 
by two other names, to be considered perhaps as their 

^ See Note M. 



25 

legal names, Prince Mauri ts's and Prince Hezc- 
drick's, Rivers, after two Princes of the House ot 
Orange. The name of Maurits has since become 
appropriated to a small river, issuing into Delaware 
Bay on the eastern side. They used the word Kill 
in two senses ; in one, as the same with the English 
word Creek, an arm of the sea or of a river ; the other 
as importing a Stream, Mespat Kill, originally In- 
dian, but retained in use by the Dutch, Newtown creek / 
Maquaas Kill, Mohock River, The Schuylkill 
still retaining its Dutch name, the translation hiding 
Creek, perhaps more strictly sculking Creek ; schuyl 
TE HouwDEN, whcu applied to Debtor, the same 
meaning with Latitat in the process. The Brandy- 
wine River and Banks retain their Dutch name. 
BooMPTiES HoECKS, tree point, corrupted to Bombay 
Hook. Whore Kill and Reedy Island, literal transla- 
tions of their Dutch names. The southern cape^ 
HiNLOPEN its Dutch name, a common surname; a 
Francis Hinlopen laid the first stone of a public 
weigh-house in Amsterdam, 1 668. The northern cape 
May, Mey, also known as Cape Cornelius, named 
after Skipper Cornelius Jacobse Mey. The first 
inlet without the cape on the New-Jersey shore, the 
Beere Gat, the Bear Gut, The word Gat, when * 
used in a nautical sense, the corresponding word in 
Dutch with Gtit in English when used in the same 
sense. The channel between the buoys leading into 
the Texel, is called the Gat. The passage between 
the Island of Goeree and the Main on their coast, 
the Gat of Goeree. The English speak of the Gut 
of Gibraltar, the Gut of Canso; and every inlet from , 



26 

tlie sea, through the beach into the bay on the south- 
ern shore of Long-Island, is spoken of as a Gut, Van 
Der Donck expresses himself, " besides fine bays and 
rivers, there are also convenient Gaten to those who 
are acquainted with them, but at present not navigated, 
especially the Beere Gat." Great and little Egg 
Harbours, translations of their Dutch names. Barne 
Gat retaining its Dutchname,anabbreviationof Bran- 
DENDE Gat, the Breaker Gut. The Dutch lexicogra- 
phers have interpreted Brandende, when importing a 
breaking of the sea, into Latin, by ferxor maris ; but 
Brandende also importing burning, and Gat Hole. 
we find the inlet laid down in the English chart here- 
tofore referred to, by the name of burning hole, Sandy 
Hook; the Dutch generally called it the Sandt Punt, 
and it is also mentioned as the Sandt Hoeck, and for 
some time called by the English Sandy Point, The 
island under the Long-Island shore, to be considered 
as the northeastern chop of the entrance from the sea, 
Beeren Island, Bear Island, but the soil being of the 
kind denominated by us Beach, barren, hence corrupt- 
ed to Barren Island. To an Island immediately west- 
ward of it they gave the name of Conyn's Island, Coney 
Island; Conyn, a Dutch surname still remaining among 
us; — from the name Coney, iheve are already symptoms 
of the beginning of a tradition that it once abounded 
in Rabbits, The Narrows they called the Hoofden, 
their name for the forelands on the British coast, lite- 
rally head lands. The names of the towns in the 
vicinity, Utretcht, Breuckelen, corrupted to 
Brookline, and Amersfort, changed to Flat lands, 
denote the District in the Father Land, furnishing thf 



27 

first settlers. Gravesend settled, and in Duteh time, 
and under a Dutch grant, by some families immedi- 
ately from England — a Lady Deborah Moody, the 
Dido, leading the colony. Flathush ; a corruption, 
and may also serve as a translation, of its Dutch 
name, Vlachte-bos — its primitive Dutch name, Mid- 
wouT, Midwood, — why or whence changed, does not 
appear. A conjecture is offered, that Breuckelen 
and Amersfort were, from their proximity to the wa- 
ters, earliest settled, and a space intermediate and 
about equidistant between them remained as Wout or 
Bos, Wood, and denoted as the MiD-ioout, and the 
Bos on the Plain or Vlachte, the site of the present 
village of Flathush, as to be distinguished from Bos, 
or Wood, on the contiguous Geberghle, or Ridge, 
came to be designated as the Vlachte-bos. Rust- 
dorp, the Dutch name for Jamaica, say Tarrytown, 
Coe and his associates, in their application, 1656, to 
Stuyvesant, for the lands there, represent themselves 
as " living at a new plantation, near the Beaver path, 
called Jemaico'''^ — hence the subsequent Jamaica, We 
find the Dutch Vlissengen, in the English Flushing ; 
and the Armen Bouerey, the Farm, purchased by the 
Deaconry of New-York, for the use of the poor, in an 
intended translation of it, the Poor Bozyery. TheDutch 
called the Bay bounded on the south by the Ocean, 
on the east by Long Island, on the north partly by the 
mouth of the Hudson and partly by the shore of New- 
Jersey, and on the west wholly by the shore of New- 
Jersey, and Staten-Island considered as lying within 
it, The Great Bay of New Netherland, and so called, 
as Van Der Donck expresses it, ^'•propter Kxcellcn- 



28 

ilam^'^'' eminently the Bay, Newark Bay, from its re- 
lative situation to the Great Bay, they called Het 
ACHTER CuL, literally the Back Bay ; Cul, borrowed 
from the French Cul de sac, and also in use with the 
Dutch to signify a bay. Achter Cul, found in 
very early writings in English referring to it, cor- 
rupted to Arther CuWs Bay : the passage from it into 
the Great Bay they called Het Kill van het Cul, 
the Kill of the Cull, finally come to be expressed by 
the Kills, A reef in the Bay, not far from the mouth 
of the Kills, Robyns rift, seal reef; the seal hereto- 
fore frequently taken in the Bay, and Robyn, a name 
with the Dutch for it. The name of the reef cor- 
rupted to Bobbins Reef, The Strait between the 
Bay and the Sound, the latter also occasionally dis- 
tinguished by them as the Great Bay, they denoted 
from its relative situation to the other two rivers, as 
the East River ; the island at the entrance of it they 
called Nooten Island, J^ut Island, corrupted to J^lut- 
ten Island, the name by which it was known till within 
the last fifty years, when it began at times to be spoken 
of, or referred to, as the Governor''s Island, it having, 
from the beginning, been reserved for the use of the 
Governor, and hence its present name exclusively 
Governor's Island, Long Island retains its Dutch 
name translated ; and a legal name was assigned to if 
by an act of Assembly, 1693, the Island of J^assau, 
Staaten Island retains its name with a slight vari- 
ance in the spelling, Statcn Island ; an island of the 
same name on the coast of the district of Maine. 

Among the first who came over, not improbable the 
very first as husbandmen, were some families of JVa!- 



29 

loons, A child born in 1625, named Sarah, the pa- 
rents, Walloons, of the name of D'Rapalje. The 
blessing of the relations of Rebecca seems to have 
rested on her ; the mother of thousands, at least, in 
succession from her, in King's County. A tradition 
in the family, that she was the first rvhite born here, 
and that, induced by the circumstance, the Indians 
gave to D'Rapalje and his brethren, like the other 
French who followed them in the same century, for- 
saking their country not to forsake the truth^ the lands- 
adjacent to the bay, hence named Het Waalf. 
BoGHT, the Walloon Bai/, corrupted to the Wallahovl 
Bay. Besides D'Rapalje, the names of Le Escuyer, 
Duryee, La Sillier, Cershou, Conseiller, Musserol. 
and others, still to be found there, or in the vicinity. 
Extract from the Journal of the Dutch Council, 
1656 : — " Sarah Jorison, the first born Christian 
daughter in New Netherland, widow of Hans Hansen, 
burdened with seven children, petitions for a grant 
of a piece of meadow, in addition to the twenty mor- 
gen granted to her at the Waale Boght." The set- 
tlement also denoted, at times, as Markwyck, Market- 
i&yck, and the adjacent Tract, then still a wood, as 
BoswYCK, tolerably translated by Bushwyck, The 
Dutch Wyck is still to be traced in the EngHsh Greew- 
loich^ Ipswich ; when applied to a city, the Dutch used 
it as a substitute for the English Ward, 

To digress for a moment — 

Winter wheat to be taken in payment at five shil- 
lings, and summer wheat at four shillings and six- 
pence, per bushel — 1 675. 

4 



30 

Wampum — six white to pass for a stuiver or pen- 
ny, and three hlack at the same rate — 1672. 

Bond for 1600 guilders in Wampum — 1672. 

Mexico plate to pass at the rate of six shillings, and 
Peru at the rate o( Jive shillings, per eighteen penny- 
weight— 1675. 

110/. in pieces of eight, at six shillings, J^ew-Eng- 
land money, each, the consideration for a lot — 1668. 

A grant for a tobacco plantation at the Waale 
BOGHT— 1643. 

20 Guilders in Wampum equal only to 10 Guilders 
in Holland money. 

A ship arrived in Holland from New Netherland. 
laden with tobacco and some peltry — 1661. 

A conveyance for a farm at Mespat Kill, with 
the habitation and the tobacco house — 1665. 

750 guilders in tobacco, the consideration in a con- 
veyance for a lot ; 932 pounds weight of tobacco 
raised on a farm ; and an action for 400 pounds weight 
oi tobacco and 2 Stuivers — 1667. 

2100 pounds weight of tobacco, the consideration 
for half of a farm on the Delaware ; and a mortgage 
of half a crop of tobacco on the ground : and, at the 
same period, more acres of peas than of wheat re- 
turned in the inventories of estates of persons -de- 
ceased; and hence, perhaps, the apparently high 
price of the grain. 

Madeira wine one shilling and ten-pence a quart, 
and rum two shillings and four-pence a gallon — 1675. 

Total of the assessed value of estates in the city. 
J 668, 78,231/., and a tax of a penny half-penny in a 



31 

pound to be levied on it ; the total of the value, 1815, 
81,636,512 dollars. 

To return to our subject — 

The name of the point opposite to the Waale 
BoGHT, one of the chops of our harbour, Curler's 
Hook, and still retaining it, and so called after Arent 
Van Curler, the same already mentioned as the 
predecessor of Schuyler in influence and honour with 
the five nations. He purchased the farm or plantation 
there in 1652, and as denoted by its Indian name 
Nechtank^ and afterwards removed to Albany, and 
was drowned in Lake Champlain, and hence the 
Dutch thereafter called it Curler's Lake. " It is in 
honour of this man, who was a favourite of the In- 
dians," says our historian, "that the governors of 
New- York, in all their treaties, were addressed by 
the name of Curler ^"^"^ or as generally spelt, Corlear, 
His widow took out administration of his estate b\ 
her name before marriage, Juffrouw, Madam, ANTO-zU^'i' 
isli»-8laghboom ; always the privilege* of the Dutch 
wife to resume it at pleasure, to show her descent. 
Pride ! vanity ! granted, Sir " Valour and Contem- 
plation," and — what then ? 

A point in the narrow part of the lake, they called 
the Kruine Punt, corrupted to, and which may also 
pass for a translation of it. Crown Point ; the word 
crown understood as intending the crown of the head: 
more properly, however. Scalp, or Scalping, Point, 
The historian speaks of it " as the place whence the 
French sent out their scalping parties." The French 

* See Note VII, 



32 

« ailed it Fort Frederick, To Ticonderoga, the Indiait 
Meeting of Waters, they gave a name apparently sin- 
gular, Carillon, a chime of bells* To Lake George, a 
name importing, the Lake of the Holy Sacrament. 

The Dutch name for a small bay or cove, on the 
East River, about two miles above Curler's Hook, 
Deutel Bay, corrupted to Turtle Bay. When the 
head of the cask was farther secured with pegs, they 
would say the cask was gedeutelt ; the pegs were 
short, but at the base broad ; the Bay narrow at its 
entrance, broad at the bottom ; the supposed resem- 
blance between the bay and the peg, the supposed 
origin of the name. The Point, about the same dis- 
tance farther, they called Hoorn's Hoeck, Hornh 
Point; there is a point in the Thames of the same 
name, but pronounced there in plainer English, " the- 
word unpleasing to the married ear." 

THE ISLANDS IN THE RIVER 

The Dutch name of the first, Varken, Hog Island, 
its legal English name Manning^s Island, so called 
after the proprietor of it once, the unfortunate Cap- 
tain John IVtanning, "whose sword was afterward 
broken over his head in public, before the City Hall. 
for treacherously delivering up the garrison to the 
Dutch, 28th July, 1673." The next two islands. 
Groote, and Kleyne, Barent's Islands, corrupted 
10 Great and Little Barn Islands, Barent, a Dutch 
Christian name. Barent Janse, overseer of the Island 
under the West-India company. Little Barens'' Island. 
L^rantcd to Delaval, 1 069 : a piece of meadow released 



33 

to him on the north side of Barents Isle ; a piece re- 
leased to him on the south side of Little Barent'^s 
Island. The tract between Harlem River and the 
large stream next eastward, Bronck's Land. Jonas 
Bronck, the first proprietor of it : — the passage be- 
tween it and Little Barn Island, called Bronck's 
River, and the stream also, as the lands on its banks 
became settled, afterward denoted by, and still retain- 
ing, the same name. The Dutch name for West- 
chester, OosTDORP, Easton ; and a district adjacent to 
it, not now to be defined, Vreedlandt, Peace Land, 
The islands, the Gesellen, their Dutch name trans- 
lated, the Brothers, The passage between Long- 
Island and Great Barn Island, the Dutch called Het 
Helle Gat, corrupted to Hell-Gate^ and finally to 
Hurl-Gate, I have shown what Gat imports in 
Dutch, when used as in the present instance, so that 
Hellegat may be interpreted either Hellgut, or the 
Gut of Hell, De Laet, in his Latin work, has it 
fnferi os. When a ferry was, within a few years 
since, about to be established from Hoorn's Hoeck 
to Long-Island, and a dock being necessary for a 
landing or stairs, the persons employed to build it. 
having finished it, a duty of humanity still remained. 
the traveller was to be directed in the right way ^ they 
accordingly put up a hand or guide board, where the 
road turns off from the main road, with the direction 
coarsely painted on it, no matter how coarsely^ it was 
plain enough for all to read it, " The road to Hurl- 
gate Ferry," and this the origin of the name Hurl- 
gate, That they should be offended at the first 
syllable in the name ifeZ/gate, may perhaps be ar- 
4* 



34 

counted for: they may have considered the use of it. 
unless in open reprehension of themselves, or in 
rebuke of others, as naughty, having been so trained 
in their youth ; or they may have been apprehensive, 
that being too familiar with the name, might tend to 
render the place too familiar, and so take otf from 
the dread of it ; but why they should adopt hurl as 
the substitute cannot be conceived, inasmuch as a 
gate, so far from hurling or hurrying us through, 
may, at times, perform to us one of the best offices of 
a friend, to stay or check us in our career of more haste 
than good speed. Perhaps the dockbuilders iiever 
thought so far ; and I am fearful, that however inclined 
we may be to find a motive for them, w^e shall, after 
all, be obliged to say, that when they undertook to 
amend the name, they zvent beyond their dock. But 
the persons most to blame are the editors of our pub- 
lic papers. It will be acknowledged they have it in 
iheir power to give currency — limit it for the moment 
to names ; it ought, however, to occur to them, that 
all power implies trust for the due exercise of it, and 
they speak as familiarly of going, and coming, through 
Hurlgatc, as they do of going out of, and coming into. 
Sandy Hook, 1 pray, however, I may not be consi- 
dered as taking it upon me to be their censor — far 
different from it; for notwithstanding the carpings of 
some, who love to be ever finding fault, that, not unfrc- 
quently, their facts are not the fact, their reasonings 
not logic, their praise sickening, their dispraise, as to 
Ihe manner of it, tlic reverse of good manners, their 
wit, omitting to remember " that mediocrity in wit was 
{-ics'cr permitted in any,-' their best excuse; and not- 



35 

withstanding the sneers of others, that at times they are 
so sententious, so sagacious, so profound, as to be won- 
derful, I say, and say it with sincerity, may they flourish : 
zoithout newspapers, numerous and free, we are without 
Liberty ; the growth even of weeds indicates soil and 
season ; I, however, prefer another illustration more 
courteous and not less apt— the richest harvest must 
have its straws to sustain it. The English Hellgate 
has been so long peaceably in possession, I am con- 
tent it should remain so. I have no desire to go back 
either to Dutch language or Dutch law ; not to the 
one because not better than the English, nor to the 
other, because not so good. The Dutch took the 
civil law of Rome ; there they erred ; they should 
have taken the common law of England — The trial 
by jury ! — How the law ? To be declared by the judge, 
hence ever to be a man of the law. How the fact ? 
To be found by the unanimous verdict of a jury to be 
taken from the Laity of the place at large, to be kept 
together in private, until agreed ; and in the discre- 
tion of the judge, in the mean time, to permit suste- 
nance to be furnished them. How the inquiry ? In 
open court before the judge, by the oral testimony of 
the witnesses, the jury to notice their demeanour and 
appearance, and, if requisite, they to be confronted. 
How the evidence ? Under the control of the judge a? 
incident. How if the judge err? An exception to be 
taken to his opinion, and the error examined else- 
where. How if the jury mistake in their verdict ? In 
the sound discretion of the judge to set it aside, and 
award a new trial. How if a juror happen to be 
returned not standing indifferent between the parties / 



36 

To be challenged, and the challenge to he instantlv 
tried by triers, to be elected by the judge, and, where 
life in jeopardy, the accused privileged to challenge a 
due number peremptorily and no cause of challenge 
required — all this of human contrivance ! 

" In the year one thousand six hundred and four- 
teen," says De Laet, " the ship of Skipper Adrian 
, Block took fire by accident, and he built here a 
'^ Yacht of thirty-eight i^Qi keel, forty-four feet and a 
half on deck, and eleven feet and a half beam, with 
which he sailed through the Hellegat into the Great 
Bay, and visited all the places thereabout, and went 
in it as far as Cape Cod ;" and I shall intend him to 
have been the first who passed through the Gat, and 
that, wherever they were given, he gave the Dutch 
names to the places he visited. 

If he went through at about two thirds flood, and 
either at the full or change, it must have appeared 
most terrific to him, and the name, the exclamation, 
might have escaped him. Still I think he is not 
wholly to be pardoned. As a Dutchman, it is to be 
presumed, he was very early instructed in his cate- 
chism, and if he had attended to the proofs in the 
margin under the proper Sunday Section, he would 
have seen it was more to be likened to the way lead- 
ing to the good place, narrow, scarcely admitting two 
abreast, the Hog''s back, and the Pot, the rock on the 
one hand, and the whirlpool on the other, mind your 
helm, keep in the true tide, his incessant caution to his 
Stierman, whereas the way leading to the other 
place, the bad place, is laid down as being broad, as 
many at a time as choose, and you have nothing to do 



37 

but to dow7i sail or lay upon your oarsy as the case 
may be, and leave yourself to the current, and drive 
through. 

The Sunday Section ; the name by which the sec- 
tions are distinguished in the Dutch Original ; the 
name by which the day was known to the first con- 
verts from among the Gentiles, taught by the Apos- 
tles, they taught by the Divine Teacher himself, and 
the use of it continued by them after their conversion. 
and from them to those who claimed, and rightfully, 
to be their followers, the reformers, including the 
Reverend Fathers, the Synod of Dort, all distinctly 
understanding the terms or names they used, and 
hence distinctly understanding themselves — Satisfied 
the seventh, the required, portion of time, a diurnal 
revolution of the sun, was set apart, and the observance 
of the hitherto day ceasing, as alike typical with priest- 
hood and altar, and so alike spent ; and the next day 
taken as the most obvious course, there being no rea- 
son for prefering another, they appear to have occu- 
pied themselves otherwise than in surmising and in- 
quiring, whether it would not tend to a more devout 
observance of it, to substitute the name by which it 
was known by the Apostles among themselves, they 
being Jews, the^r^^ day ; or the name by which it is 
mentioned by an apostle, referring to an occasion ren- 
dering it, in an eminent sense, the day of the Lord, 
'^ When his great voice was heard as of a trumpet, I 
am the First and the Last," and the text accord- 
ingly to be viewed, as preserved to us, to intimate doc- 
Irine, not formally to prescribe name; or the Jewish 
name for the last day of the week, the Sabbath, their 



38 

day of rest from work from sunset to sunset ? In 
England they have schools on the day for the gratuitous 
instruction of the poor ; we have them now likewise ; 
there, having the merit to have led^ they are called Sun- 
day Schools ; with us, having the merit only, for although 
merit still no more than secondary^ to h2iVefollo7ved, 
they are in some places to be called Sabbath Schools. 
To impart sanctity by force of a J^ame ! Singular con- 
ception 1 — The more singular, the intelligence of many, 
in whom apparently found, considered — But if no- 
ticed as in some^ in respect to a day, must I not, if to 
stand equal with all, notice it as in others in respect to 
a Building — The Church of The most holy Trinity — 
Christ Church — the Church of the Holy Spirit — 
Saint George's Church — By w^hat Name did the Apos- 
tles denote the Building, the place where they came 
together to join in worship ? — The Temple, with its 
Services, had by the advent of the prototype, the 
Divine Intercessor in Person, in thejiesh, ceased — 
The Synagogue however remained, and, deducing 
from the Volume of Scripture as the authority, the 
preferable presumption, 1 choose to express myself 
with dilFidencc, would seem to be, that they continu- 
ed it, with its mode of rule, and of Oversight, or 
Charge, by an Eldership ; and hence with its Name, 
Two passages will be cited, and the last perhaps to be 
received as decisive — " Not forsaking the assembling 
ourselves together" — in the original, " synagogueing,^' 
*• If there come into your assembly a man" — in the 
original, " synagogue.^'^ The Puritans, doubtless, 
adopted the preferable translation, or name, a Meet- 
ing House. 



39 

Another instance of the not improbable effect of 
mere Name, The Dutch, in their Version of the 
Scriptures, at the Reformation, in translating the 
Greek Episcopos, rejected the exotic Bischoff, and be- 
took themselves to the indigenous Opsiender ; in the 
compound preposition for preposition, and verb for 
verb. The great Reformer did not in his Version, 
take the kindred German indigenous Au i Fsciler , Ovc?-^ 
seer, but adhered to the exotic Bischoff,^ He, how- 
ever, was consistent ; for when he came to the pas- 
sage, where the Greek Episcopous occurs, he transla- 
ted it by the plural Bischoffen, thereby making the 
whole College of Ephesian Elders Bishops, Had the 
English been uniform in their Version, and translated 
the Greek Episcopos throughout, as they have done 
in the passage alluded to, by their alike correspondent 
indigenous Overseer, there would perhaps have been 
the like effect as with the Dutch, not even a term, or 
name, in their language, left for Episcopacy. 

Before quitting the Subject, chiefly occupying the 
last (ew paragraphs, I would mention the fact, not 
only as authority for the early, and doubtless univer- 
sal, use of the name Sunday, but also for another pur- 
pose, which will be perceived without farther intima- 
tion ; that it is the name by which the Emperor Con- 
stantine denotes the day, in his Edict, enjoining the 
religious observance of it. The first instance of the 
interposition or agency of the secular sovereignty in 
aid of the kingdom of Christ. It is a Maxim ; and 
to repeat it in the Diction of the highly endowed Gen- 
tile from whom I borrow it, " Omnia mala exempla 
ex bonis orta sunt." Not unfrequently vouched by 



40 

iJhristian Doctors ; but as it checks project and inno- 
vation, less frequently heeded by them. It may be 
translated, " that scarcely an evil example or effect, 
not to be traced to good or sincere beginning." The 
names of the evil effects of the pious zeal of the 
imperial convei*t, Hierarchy, or religious establish- 
ment ; and the thing signified, found, even at the pre- 
sent day, throughout the whole of European Chris- 
tendom. 

I pray it may be noticed that I am still within m) 
Subject, Jsfames ; so that if all true, then all right. 

Skipper Block named the Norwalk Islands Archi- 
pelago ; Stratford, or the Indian Housatenick, River, 
Royenbergh's River; an Island in the Sound, Val- 
c HEN, Falcon or Hawk, Island, not improbable from 
the resort of the Fish Hawk there, corrupted by some 
to Fawkncr''s, by others to Falkland, Island. The 
Connecticut he named the Versche, Fresh, River, 
doubtless as to be distinguished from the south and 
north rivers, in sooner meeting with fresh water on 
entering it from the sea. 

The Dutch built a Fort on the Flat, the western 
l)ank of it, now the city of Hartford, for the protec- 
tion of their trade with the Indians, and called the 
Fort, at times, the Huys, the trading House, van 

GOEDE HOPE, of gOod hopC, JoHANNES De La MoN- 

TAGNE, of the council of New Netherland, and Doctor 
of Medicine, was the Governor ; Trumbull, the histo- 
riographer of Connecticut, calls him Monsieur Mon- 
tague ^ the surname Montague, appertaining to an 
ancient and noble family, in England ; he says the 
Dutch called the Fort, the Hirse of Good Hope ; if 



41 

rlie word was ever in their laiiguagc, it has since be- 
«:ome obsolete ; he also says, " the Indians had no set 
meals, but, like other wild creatures, ate when they 
were hungry, and could find any thing to satisfy the 
<:ravings of nature, and dressed their corn with a clam- 
shelly or with a stick make flat and sharp at one end, 
and that the Dutch* were always intruders, and had 
no right to any part of this country." The rule of 
I he good nature of criticism is, '* that where much 
splendour in the pages, not to suffer ourselves to be 
offended at a few specks ;" and it is to be hoped, the 
historian would have forborne from so angrily calling 
names ^ had he known of the very friendly mention his 
brother of New Netherland makes of his countrymen. 
The indiscretion of attempting the history of this 
country, not well read in the Dutch ! Van Der Donck, 
speaking of the Pumpkin, expresses himself, " It grows 
here with little or no labour, and need not yield to 
the apple for sweetness, so that the English, who 
generally love whatever tastes szveet, use it in their 
Pies." 

1 knew one of the same name with the Governor 5 
John De La Mantagne, ordinarily pronounced Jan 
MoNTAGNE, sexton of the old Dutch Church in Gar- 
den-street, '' the street adjoining the garden of Alder- 
man Johannes Kip," built in 1692; the grant for the 
ground, from the Corporation of the city, the prece- 
ding year, and '• the Common Council resolving itself 
into a grand committee to attend to the surveying and 
laying it out:" taken down in 1810, and the present 

^ See^^oteVni. 



12 

uiie built on the same site. I saw liiui at the house of 
my parents ; I in my earUest youth, he approaching to 
fourscore. He was on his round to collect the Do- 
minie's Gelt, the minister's salary ; for the Dutch 
always took care the stipend to the minister should be 
competent, that so he never might be straitened "" to 
desire a gift." He told me his father and grandfather 
before him, the latter probably the same as mentioned 
in the Records, 1649, '' Jan Da La Montague, school- 
master, with 250 Guilders salary," had been the sex- 
tons of the congregation, so that, as I have it from the 
relation of others, the successive incumbents having 
been as well of the same Christian as surname, the 
name had, as it were, become the name of the office- 
like Den Keyser, the CcBsar, the Emperor, and ac- 
cordingly when the English, having built a church, had 
also a sexton, the Dutch children, and not impossible 
some adults, called him de Engelshe Jan Mon- 
TAGNE, the Eiiglish John Montague, He told me his 
grandfather was the sexton when the church was 
within the fort, and which, from the inscription in 
Dutch, on a marble, doubtless placed in front of il, 
found buried in the earth, and then removed to the 
belfry of the church in Garden-street, when the fort 
was taken down, a few years since, appears to have 
been built as early as 1642. The site of the first 
church, the late church in Garden-street, considered 
as the third in succession, perhaps not to be now far- 
ther ascertained than as a piece of ground referred to 
in 1699, '• as belonging to the Dutch congregation,'^ 
and in 1715, "as once called the Oude Kerck, old 
Church, and afterward the house of Allard Anthonv. 



43 

;iud lying between Custo7n-House-6trcet,^^ the portion 
of Pearl-street between Whitehall and Broad-street, 
"and Bridge-street, and fronting on Broad-street.'- 
He further told me, that when, on the surrender of 
the town to the English, they took the church for a 
part of the day, his grandfather still officiated. An 
instance of singular liberality ! He, a son of the church 
of Holland, still "keeping the door of the temple,'* 
when the service within it, according to the ritual of 
the church of England ! Perhaps he thought, there 
being no difference between the confessionals of the 
two churches, the ritual ought to make none ; nay, 
were it supposed, merely however for the sake of the 
supposition, because, as applied to him personally, 
not to be imagined possible^that both confessional and 
ritual were to him matters of indifference ; still it may 
be a question, whether his liberality would not be left 
the same ? it being now ascertained, what has been 
long suspected, that boasted liberality in matters ot 
religion, and utter indifference about them, the one. 
easily made to resolve itself into the other. 

On the death of my cotemporary, the consistory 
gave the office to his son, who enjoyed it. till the dis- 
persion of the congregation, on the invasion of the 
city in 1776 ; — an office — that it was in the church, 
sufficient, according to the notioii^of the day, to make 
it respectable ; that the emolument, sparing as it w as. 
canae sensibly in aid to the sustentation of the family, 
j^L sufficient towMfed^ it lucrative ; both sufficient to make 
. ' it desirable, and consequently to invite competion : 
in the gift, and held at the pleasure, of a body, them- 
selves fluctuating, gne half going out yearly by rota- 



44 

lion; and we here see it passing, as an inheritance 
from father to son, for four generations, and for a pe- 
riod, little short, if any thing, of a century and a half. 
What an inducement to the father to due demeanour 
in it, '• the hope of the recompense," that after him ii 
would be bestowed on his son ! What encouragement 
to the son, the hope of the gift, to render himself de- 
serving of it ! What proof of character in those who 
have gone before us !* How stable ! how constant I 
" How changed are we from them !" Scarce an elec- 
tion, and a change not at least meditated ; and should 
we continue thus " variable and mutable," it is to be 
apprehended the time may come, when our beautiful 
and spacious City-Hall of marble^ including the piers 
between the windows in ithe snug cupola of wood on 
the top of it ; nay, taking in the old Bridewell, left to 
stand as a wing to it ; farther still, expand it so as to 
cover the neat grass-ptet in front of it, if it were not 
a pity to spoil it,t and especially enclosed as it is with 
pales of a due height, like the dense iron work in front 
of St. Paul's, to hide the base of the building, the 
whole will not furnish wall for the portraits of all and 
singular our successive governors and mayors. 

In addition to the probability from the circumstance 
just mentioned, that the name of the person was con- 
ceived to be the nakme of the office, my cotemporar} 
having called his eldest son, John, I infer it was also 
his father's name ; and it being his own name, I in 
like manner infer it was the name of his grandfather: ^ y .1 
so that the family appears to have been, from as far /^ 
bark as we can trace it, constantly and duly mindful 
"-' See Note IX. t See Not£ Xs 



45 



of the duty of respect, and, as it would seem, iu tlic 
opinion of some, a respect allied to piety, in a son, to 
call a son after his own father. Lest, however, I 
should be conceived as laying down this duty as of 
universal obligation, it has appeared to me, proper to 
state a few cases, and from which it may easily bo 
reasoned to others, where I think it may be dispensed 
with. 

A father and a son — the son the first of the family 
ever rich ; his coach at the door, and his plate on the 
sideboard, and, as a thing of course, arms on both. 
His riches ; entitled '* to call them his own, he made 
them himself;" his coach and his plate, no one enti- 
tled to grudge him them ; but the arms, the borrowed 
plume, always more than half spoils all ; even grant- 
ing the family deduced from the croisades, and, with 
it, its gentility never interrupted, not an instance ol 
servile occupation in the whole line of descent, and 
so the plumage not assumed, still, in a community with 
our institutions — a feather. The father, a mechanic 
of the humblest order, a son of St. Crispin, alike 
ready to serve a customer, whether to mend or make, 
and so never above his business,' and so, all sense ; in 
morals, all worthy and so, if I may be permitted in a 
plui/ on the word, and in an allusion to his vocation, 
*• no rest or residue of him leather,'^^ Here an ex- 
emption arises by mere force of elevation of condi- 
tion ; it has been given to the son to become rich ; the 
father is left poor. 

A name, abstracted from the sole and simple use of 
it, the surname to distinguish between famihes, the 
Christian name between individuals of the same 



40 

lamily, or ot the same surname, ''is a sound, and uc 
more ;" yet, as the sound may happen to be, so it ma} 
be decisive against taking it as a name ; and which 
furnishes another case of exemption. 

To illustrate by the case already stated. Let u< 
suppose the son disposed to honour his father, and to 
that end to waive his exemption ; but at the same time 
let the name of the father, instead of Eiigenio, or any 
other name of that stamp, be supposed to be some old 
fashioned, or, which comes to the same thing, somt- 
Old Testament, name ; take one of the lesser pro- 
phets, say Habakkuk, the name given to the father by 
his father, in his day somewhat inclined to Puritan- 
ism ; — now the trying question presents itself; can a 
father ever be held to call a son after a grandfather 
with such a name ? I answer this question by asking 
another, which answers itself; Can a lady be held to 
call a daughter Bridget, after her mother, the nam^ 
given to her by her mother, great grandmother to Miss 
lo be named, she having been at the time a cook-maid. 
Where the brothers are numerous, another case. 
Here the exemption arises from the necessity of the 
thing itself, as will be perceived. 

So in the habit of calling the first name the Chris- 
tian name, I cannot forbear fiom it, even when refer- 
ring to a Jew case for illustration. 

If every of the sons of the Patriarch had called a 
son after their common father, a moiety of the He- 
brew alphabet must have been impressed into the ser- 
vice to distinguish between the twelve grandsons of 
the same Christian name ; and if the sons of these 
<i;randsons had also each <^-jlIed a gon -after his father. 



47 

and the like repeated toties quoties as often as an every 
other generation came into esse^ into existence, it 
would require the powers of a Franklia to calculate 
the number of Jacobs among the tribes at the time ol" 
David's census. 

I have selected Franklin as the calculator for a rea- 
son arising from the following fact.* 

By his last will and testament, made in the year of 
our Lord one thousand seven hundred eighty-eight, 
and in the eighty-second of his own age, or rather by 
a codicil thereto, showing it was on the more mature 
deliberation, and that he was still not '' without coun- 
sel" in himself, and now appearing in the same vo- 
lume with his life, written by himself, doubtless for 
the benefit of those who were to come after him, he 
bequeaths to his country " a political opinion, that in a 
dcmocratical state there ought to be no offices of pro- 
Jit,^^ than which certainly nothing can be conceived 
more salutary in theory, but, considering the weaknes:^ 
of our frame, nothing perhaps less to be hoped for in 
practice. He then, as it were, to set the example in 
himself, proceeds to give to the town of Boston, in 
return for having given him birth, "one thousand 
pounds sterling, part of an undrawn salary, as Presi- 
dent of the State of Pennsylvania, to be let upon 
interest, at five per cent, per annum, to such young 
married artificers, under the age of twenty-five years. 
as shall have served an apprenticeship in the town, 
and faithfully fulfilled the duties required in their in- 
dentures, so as to obtain a good moral character from 
at least two respectable citizens, who are wilHng ^o 
* See note XI. 



48 

become sureties in the bond with the apphcants I'ui 
the repayment of the money so lent, with interest ;'* 
but it occurring to him, at least so it is to be presu- 
med, that an apprentice serving his apprenticeshi{» 
fhoroKghly, faithfully •, studious and anxious for hi> 
master's interest as if his own ; his master not wholly 
free from Debt, himself not wholly at Ease ; would 
probably come to think it the better course for persons 
entering into life, instead of instantly betaking them- 
selves to BORROWING for means in aid of their Busi- 
ness, to zcait for them till acquired by their owv 
EFFORTS ; and it thence occurring to him further, thai 
the description in the bequest, duly adhered to, and 
at the same time depending on the town of Boston 
alone, there would be a hazard of a failure of a suffi- 
ciency of borrowers to employ the whole capital, 
and with it a failure of liis own calculation of the 
actual increase of it, he had the precaution to pro- 
vide, '• that should there in time be more than the 
occasion in Boston may require, the other towns in the 
state to have it ; and the principal and interest paid. 
10 be again let out to fresh borrowers, and which he 
calculated would, in one hundred years, be one hun- 
dred and thirty thousand pounds, of which the town 
were, in their discretion, to lay out one hundred thou- 
sand pounds in public works, the remaining thirty-one 
thousand pounds to be continued to be let out at in- 
terest in the manner above directed, for one hundred 
years, when he calculated the sum would be four 
millions and sixty-one thousand pounds sterling; one 
million and sixty-one thousand pounds to be disposed 
of by the town, and the remaining three millions by 



49 

'the gov^rmncnt of the state, not presuming to carrj 
his views farther," — and no wonder — to have gone 
on with the accumulation for another cycle of two 
hundred years, and all intermediate contingencies 
duly guarded against, would certainly have been a 
most unreasonable draft on human providency. It 
may be a question, whether a testamentary disposition 
of this kind would not now with us be adjudged void, 
as within the prohibition intended by our statute, gene- 
mlly known as the restraining act,* making it unlaw- 
ful for persons, without an incorporation, to the effect 
of a license, from the legislature, to lend monies, the 
sum generally not large, so as to keep themselves 
always in condition to accommodate others •, the lend- 
ers furnishing the borrowers with their own notes as 
the currency, in the place of coin ; a promissory note 
with an endorser the security ; a day of payment ex- 
pressed, and in no instance exceeding ninety days, yet 
the note understoood to be renewed from time to time, 
the interest accrued to be paid at each renewal, and 
the principal not to be called for unless on a previous 
convenient notice ; and to receive monies as deposited 
for safe keeping ; or in fewer words, simply to follow 
the business of banking, as understood among us ; the 
good to arise to the public, to prevent an undue multi- 
plication of banks, and a farther benefit, since disco- 
vered, a rehef, as far as it goes, from the burden ol 
taxes, payment into the treasury of a sum, the price 
of the license, 

1 might here enlarge on several particulars. 1 will, 
however, only, and briefly, mention a few of them. 
* See Note XII. 



50 

Calling a child after a friend noi yet deceased — tlir^ 
inconvenienr^^ as it sometimes happens the best friend? 
part before death parts them. 

To show our zeal for the party, calling a son after a 
distinguished leader in it ; — a similar inconvenience. 
should the father or godfather find it ?no7'e convenient 
to change his party ; in either case, the name always 
a thi7ig in the way* 

^' Following great names" in naming a son — the 
greater the name, the more sad, should he prove 
'^ the heaviness of his mother,^^ The man of wisdom 
has selected the mother as the depository of the pride, 
and so, in great measure, of the principle, wholly ot 
the sensibility, of the family. 

Double, treble, quadruple names, and so on, for I 
find no limit prescribed by fashion, law laid out of the 
question, as "of no avail if unfashionable to observe 
it," to the number of names ; it must doubtless be 
still understood, they are not to be more numerous 
than can conveniently be retained in the recollection, 
nor too much time lost in repeating them all ; for ii 
some are never to be repeated, but ever to be left 
mute, then, for aught appearing, they might as well 
have been left out at first; at the same time, where 
several expecting the compliment, and we wishing 
always to please all^ and of course very careful never 
to offend any ; a disposition, if we find it in us, cer- 
tainly to be cherished ; there, to be safe against tht^ 
disappointment, a failure of the requisite successive 
christenings, to take a number of the names at once, 
ought perhaps to be considered only as a branch ol 



that economy ol' opportunity usually intended by 
killing two birds with one stone. 

Making surnames do duty also as Christian names, 
and enough of the latter on the ground, and, so far 
from asking the relief, entitled to complain of being 
injured in rank or precedence ; and none being dis- 
cernible for it, either as founded in taste or utility, or 
in any thing else, it is to be viewed as among the 
numberless instances of arbitrary exercise of power, 
where "the will is to suffice for the reason j'^'' and it 
were to be wished that some, chargeable with it, would 
make the case their own ; they know how they have 
felt at times at seeing others raised to a level with 
themselves. 

Naming counties, towns, villages, streets, forts, 
and so forth, after the heroes and other worthies of 
our land, by formal public authority, a sort of legis- 
lative monument, which has this to recommend it to 
repubhcan economy, that it comes cheap, so that if 
on a just estimate of the name and fame, at a future 
day, it should be found not to have been worth pre- 
serving, there will be little, if any thing, to be regret- 
led as having been thrown away ; and the late fate of 
the name of a street, and where the worth, great and 
imquestionable, shows it even, at best, precarious. 
The vestry of Trinity church, however, need not 
want a name for their venerable church-warden, 
Colonel Joseph Robinson, and Park Place, at the 
same time, left' undisturbed ; they have only to peti- 
tion the Common Council for leave to resume their 
original name for Rector-Street, before laying out their 
grounds on Broadway, Robinson-Street. A monu- 



52 

MENT* to come cheap! as cheap as where the money 
(or one of marble or bronze, whether furnished from 
the pubhc treasury, or contributed from the private 
purses of individuals, being grudged as an improvi- 
dent expenditure, is raised bi/ xvay of lottery^ it costs 
nothing, ^" There, my lord," said the pious and loyal 
Jebusite to his prince, " is the threshing floor to build 
an altar, there the oxen for burnt sacrifice and the 
threshing instruments for wood, and wheat for the 
meat offering, take them to thee and offer, I give them 
all :" — " Nay," replied the man who slew a giant, " I 
will not take for the Lord that which is thine ; I will 
buy them of thee at the full price ^ 1 will not offer of 
that which doth cost me nothing,^'' 

Let this suffice under this head of discourse, since 
ihe whole may be considered as resolving itself into 
this as a general conclusion, that inasmuch as in the 
most simple preparation of one of the most simple 
articles of our food, roasting an egg, it is true to a 
proverb, there is to be reason, much more ought there 
to be reason m givijig a name. 

Now to attend again to Skipper Block, in his cruise 
of discovery. 

He called an island in the sound, Visscher's Island, 
Fisherh Island, and the eastern point of Long-Island. 
V^isscher's Hoeck, Fisher'^s Point, A map of New 
Netherland, scarcely more than a tolerable diagram 
of it, but being as early as 1G42, probably the first, 
was by a person of the name of Visscher. Plum 
Islands, the name he gave them, translated. Block 

^■- S^e Note XI H. 



53 

Island, the skipper's own name. I trust it did not 
proceed from himself; it would give me regret he 
should be found among those, ^' who thinking their 
dwelling places are to continue to all generations, call 
their lands after their own names,^'* The next island, 
eastward, he called Martin Wyngaard's Island, 
Martin Fine?/ar<?'5 Island, corrupted to Jl/ar^Aa'^ Vine- 
yard. An island in Penobscot Bay, and Cape Ann, 
called by the same name, the latter, Wyngaard's 
HoECK, VineyarS^s Point, The island in the sound 
is, in the grant from King Charles to the Duke of 
York, and in the confirmations for it, and in those for 
the adjacent islands, where referred to, called the 
island of Martin'^s Vineyard, Whoever the person 
intended was, he must have been distinguished for 
his station, or skill, or enterprise. Stith, of Virginia, 
says that^Gosnold in the summer of 1602, among 
other places on the coast, visited Martha'^s I'^neyard, 
and finding plenty of strawberries, raspberries, and 
divers other fruit, in bloom, he therefore called it 
Martha's Vineyard,'^'' Had the historian himself 
visited the island, he would have been satisfied /r?«7- 
fulness could never have suggested the name for it. 
We have already noticed specimens of this kind of 
etymological dialectic ; — the name of the island Bar- 
ren Island^ the soil barren^ hence the name ; Coney, 
the same with Rabbit, the name of the island Coney 
hland, it must have taken its name from the animal, 
and hence once in numbers on it ; because the island 
called Vineyard, it abounded in fruit. It is only re- 
quested to bear in mind for the present, Marller\s 
Rotk and the Fly-Market, 

6 



54 

A family in Albany, and from the earliest time, oi 
the name of Wyngaard. The last, in the male line. 
Lucas Wyngaard, died about sixty years ago, nevei 
married, and leaving estate — the invitation to his fu- 
neral very general — those who attended, returned, 
after the interment, as was the usage, to the house ot 
the deceased, at the close of the one day, and a num- 
ber never left it until the dawn of the next. In the 
course of the night, a pipe of wine, stored in the cel- 
lar for some years before for the occasion, drank ; do- 
zens of papers of tobacco consumed ; grosses of pipes 
broken ; scarce a whole decanter or glass left ; and, to 
crown it, the pall-bearers made a bon-fire of their 
scarves on the hearth — bordering on barbarism ! not 
to be denied. We are more temperate, wholly free 
from excess and riot — admitted. The causes of this 
improvement in manners? — One will be intimated. 
Let not the severe among us rail too severely at the 
young lady'^s tea-party, and the cotillion on the carpet 
to her piano. We are improved in manners — true, 
and so far to our credit ; but is there more of order 
among us, each one knowing his place 1 More of defe- 
rence to superiors, and superiors more regardful of 5/0- 
tion/' More of love of country, and less oi profession 
of it ? More of courage, and less vaunt of it ? More 
of the spirit of freemen, and so more of disdain of un- 
worthy submission to the will of another? More soli- 
citous for estimation, and so more solicitous to merit 
it? More of truth, its modes, candor, sincerity, fide- 
lity ? Inquire of the Nestors, who have lived both 
:iges. 

To the largest of the Elizabeth Islands, Block gave 



55 

the name of the Texel, to Mtntucket the name oi 
Vlielandt. Extract from the voyage of Hudson, as 
found in De Laet. " They made the land again in 
41° 43' of north latitude, and supposed it to be an 
island, and gave it the name of Nieuwe Hollandt, 
Js/'ew Holland, but afterward found it was Cape Cod.^^ 
The Dutch, notwithstanding, afterward distinguished 
it as Staaten Hoeck, State'^s Point ^ and also by its 
French name, Cape Blanc, translated Witte Hoeck, 
fVhite Point. 

The Dutch name for our city was Nieuwe Amster- 
dam ; to the tract, the plantations on the North river, 
for about four mile?, they gave the name of Bloe- 
men'd Dal, syllable for syllable, Blooming Dale, 
There were two other seats on the Island, probably 
not far distant from the town, and distinguished as 
XIajp* Dales — Vreden-dal, Peace-dale, the property 
of'i)r. De La Montague, and Zegen-dal, Blessing- 
dale, the propietor not mentioned ; hence the conjec- 
ture not remote, that Bloemen'd-dal, however at 
first the name of an individual seat, soon served to de- 
note the whole neighbourhood of farms there, col- 
lectively. 

The creek, the water between the north end of 
the island and the West-Chester shore, they called 
Spyt den Duyvel Kill, literally, in spite of the De- 
vil Creek ^ a ford there before Kiagsbridge built, and 
the spot distinguished as the FoNTEYx,*l;he Springs. 

The northern chop of the entrance from the Bai/ 
into the Kills, retains it Dutch name, Konstabel's 
Hoeck, Constable^ Hook; its Indian, Mpnichsen. 
CoMMUNiPA. is Indian ; Paulus hoeck, a person b\ 



56 

the name of Paulus Schrick, and of note in the Co 
lony, described, in a very early grant for lands in this 
city, as of the " town of Bergen, in New- Jersey ;'' 
Pavonia, a name given by the Dutch to the grounds, 
the front or shore of it on the river, still passing by it? 
Indian name, Ahasimus ; it was reserved by the Dutch 
West India Company as a peculiar demesne, the pur- 
pose not known ; Hoboken, a Dutch name, Harmc 
Van Hoboken, clerk of the church, 1650 ; fVeehawk, 
is Indian ; Joncker's Kill, Yonker''s Creek ^ Joncker 
from JoNGE Heer, the young lord, the appellation 
once for the heir of the family, after come to the age 
of maturity ; none, perhaps, nearer to it than Bache- 
lor, and in instances, the person, although afterward 
married, continued to be known by it during his life : 
the historian himself the grantee, in a grant, 1648, by 
the name of Joncker Van Der Donck ; Balthazer 
De Vosch, a party in a suit by the name of Joncker 
De Vosch : the name of the Joncker, the proprietor 
of the creek, now Saw-Mill creek. Van Der Kee ; and 
it is still to be collected from documents, as not being 
improbable, that the lands granted to Van Der Donck, 
and perhaps including the island of the Indian name 
of Papuriminon, the northern shore at Kingsbridge, 
were the neighbourhood called the lower Yonckers as 
to be distinguished from the other Yonckers, the lands 
of Van Der Kee on the Saw-mill creek ; Tappaanse 
Zee, from the name of the tribe of Indians inhabiting 
the western shore ; the country there, and to some ex- 
tent, denoted, in Visscher's map, as the Colonie ol 
a person of the name of Nederhorst ; of not equal 
enterprise, as has appeared, withKiLLiAN Van Rens- 



0/ 

SELAER, "a most zealous promoter," says \ai> Dcr 
Donck, ' and hearty friend of New Netherland, always, 
to his death." Pownal, in a journal of a passage from 
Albany to New- York, in 1753, calls it Topang Sea, 
not unlike a Chinese name ; the point or peninsula, 
the northern chop of the bay, or entrance into Croton 
River, the Skippers called Sarah's Point; the In- 
dians gave it to William and Sarah Teller, husband 
and wife, and she survived him ; the promontory on 
the western shore, opposite to it, Verdreitige Hoeck, 
Tedious Point ; it occupies such a space on the shore, 
that, in a calm, or the wind foul, long in passing it : 
Haverstroo, literally, oat straw, the name of the tract 
of arable land immediately above it; its Indian name. 
Kumochenack, Stony Point retains its Dutch name 
translated ; the British took possession of it, and for- 
tified it, in the war of the Revolution ; the assault and 
capture of it, by Wayne, an exploit, for gallantry and 
success, in our offensive warfare on the land, remain- 
ing to be equalled. The Bonder Bergh, and on the 
east side of the river, the Kill of Jan Peek, retaining 
their Dutch names ; the promontory just above Peek's 
Kill, presenting itself on turning the point of the Don- 
der Bergh, they called Antonie's Neus, corrupted 
to Saint Anthony'^s JSI'ose, 

At the period when the opinion began to prevail 
that the calendar ought to be revised and reformed, 
the Dutch judged it preferable, at least for themselves, 
to make one anew, and to take their own time for it : 
even the cases of Saint Peter arid Saint Paul, favoured 
suitors as they are, and unquestionably entitled to be, 
are still suffered to lay over, and, to preserve the ques- 
6* 



58 

lion entire, they are guarded to this day to speak of 
them only as plain Peter and plain Paul. In every 
instance where the court of claims have proceeded to 
a definite sentence, they have uniformly dismissed the 
petition. Briefly to report a few cases, as specimens, 
the decision, however, only, and the principle of it ; 
omitting, as not called for by the occasion, the argu- 
ments of counsel. 

Patrick of Kirkpatrick in Scotland — he emigrated 
to Ireland ; the reason why not known, and the eraj 
not having come down to us as one peculiarly of re- 
form or revolution in government, none can be ima- 
gined ; that it was with the hope a consistory could 
be found there to pass him with less scrutiny, evidentl} 
a fiing by the native at the adopted country. If ob- 
jected, that the word not allowed in grave discourse, 
the answer, that there is no synonyme for it in the lan- 
guage, and no periphrasis without employing, at least . 
half a score of others, and then, perhaps, as not unu- 
sual, falling short of the exact sense. 

Man, from his very condition, can have only one 
native country ; it can never be said of him, he was 
born in two countries ; if Patrick had expressed him- 
self, he was an Irishman born in Scotland, it would 
have been obviously a blunder ; but while this is ad- 
mitted on the one hand, it ought to be so on the other, 
that the objection to having an adopted country, that 
if you may have one you may have more, and as man\ 
more, one after another, as may suit ; as many xoed- 
loclcs 2iS ports in a voyage, in succession, to touch at, i? 
as obviously futile. 

Tlio Duloli roadily acknowledged the nuril of rid- 



59 

ding a community of reptiles, and so far the petitioner 
had no reason to complain that justice was not done 
him ; still there was a reason, and it was sufficient, 
which must for ever forbid them from having a good- 
liking to him ; they were republicans, and his very 
name, Patrick^ a direct derivative from the Latin Pa- 
tricius, signifying nobleman, or aristocrat, 

George of Cappadocia, the champion Saint of the 
English — although the Dutch had never read Gibbon, 
nor another great historian who had just preceded 
him, and if they had, it would not have escaped their 
sagacity that both were to be watched when writing 
about the saints ; they, however, had the fact from 
another quarter, and it was sufficient, that George ex- 
pelled their favourite, Athanasius, from his episcopal 
throne of Alexandria, and usurped it himself; for 
although liberal in a toleration to strangers, for the 
sake of trade, still, as among themselves, strenuous 
for the necessity of a quicunque vult,^ in order, as they 
would express themselves, to know where to find a 
man ; for be it known, that to profess one way and 
believe another^ was never known among the Dutch. 

Anthony of Egypt — the first monk, and hence to be 
supposed foremost in the heresy of "forbidding to 
marry ;" nothing ever to be called after him. 

JVicAo/a5 of Patara, in Lysia. Here something like 
an interlocutory was entered. From the legend, as 
preserved by the learned Egnatius of Venice, it ap- 
peared he had secretly put in at the window of a 
father, so " distressed in estate," as to have become 
'• afflicted in mind" to desperation, a sum expressed 

* See Note XIV. 



60 

to be "of no small weight in gold," and thereby saved 
him from bartering his three daughters to ruin. I( 
was farther offered in evidence, " that he was descend- 
ed from rich parents," to show how his heart had been 
preserved to him " in all the time of his wealth ;" the 
fact being well known, the counsel against the peti- 
tion, to save the necessity of proof, admitted it, and 
its pertinency to the inquiry; the cause was ordered 
to be retained for further advisement^ and in the mean 
time the petitioner to have leave to take and use the 
name of Sanctus Klaas ; that he be deemed so far 
tutelar, as that his anniversary, it being referred to the 
proper officer of the court to ascertain it, be kept : 
and that the children, in their httle hymn of thanks, 
for the good things, the reward for going to bed early, 
found in the stocking, hung up in the corner, on the 
eve of it, and put in by him during the night as he 
lides in his wagon, tilled with them, over the roofs of 
the houses, and down and up the chimneys, might ad- 
dress him as Goedt Heyligh Man, good holy man, 

A peculiarity, as to be collected from these reports, 
making the likings and dislikes rest on a single reason, 
and, of course, the sufficiency and sincerity of them 
brought to a single test, and which the Dutch, '' their 
minds ever conscious of rectitude," never shunned. 

There was a day always kept here by the Dutch, 
and the keeping of it delegated by the mothers to their 
daughters still at school, vrouwen dagh, woman\s 
day ; the same day with the Valentine'' s day of the 
English, and although diflerently, still, perhaps, not 
less salutarily, kept. Every mother's daughter fur- 
nished with a piece of cord, the size neither too large 



61 

nor too small ; the twist neither too hard nor too 
loose ; a turn round the hand and then a due length 
left to serv^e as a lash ; not fair to have a knot at the 
end of it, but fair to practise for a few days to acquire 
the slight ; the law held otherwise in duelhng. On 
the morning of the day, the youngster never venturing 
to turn a corner without first listening whether no 
warblers behind it. No golden apples to divert from 
the direct course in this race. Schoolboy Hippome- 
nes, espied and pursued by charmer Atalanta ; he en- 
cumbered with his satchel, still striving to outrun, 
and, to add to his speed, bending forward, thereby 
giving the requisite roundness to the space between 
the shoulders : she too swift afoot for him, and over- 
taking him, and three or four strokes briskly and 
smartly laid on ; he, to avoid a farther repetition, 
stopping and turning ; she looking him steadfast in the 
eye, and perceiving it required all the man in him to 
keep back the tear ; not all the fruit in all the orchards 
of the Hesperides, and in their best bearing year, to 
compensate for the exultation of the little heart for 
the moment. The boys insisted the next day should 
be their's, and be called mannen dagh, man's day ; 
but my masters were told, the law would thereby de- 
feat its own very purpose, which was that they should, 
at an age, and in a way, most likely never to forget 
it, receive the lesson of manliness, he is never to 

STRIKE. 

This privilege has been neglected for such a length 
of time, that, perhaps, it is never again to be recover- 
ed ; 1 do not however think it lays in our mouth to 
charge the other sex, that rather than be at the trouble. 



^3 

and especiall)^ if attended with expense, to preserve 
rights, let them he lost, 

I have now to do with my own party, and, therefore, 
the other party not entitled to take offence at any 
thing I may say. 

My own party, the Federal party, by iheiT primitive 
perfect name without the subsequently invented addition 
of Republican, Is it not in the constitution itself, 
that those who formed it were Repubhcans? Suppose, 
yes — then " the expression of it wholly inoperative,^' 
Suppose, no — will calling themselves so,make them sot* 
There will be parties where the government is free : 
still, "wo unto them through whom they come." A 
neutral ^mong freemen, a solecism in character^ per- 
haps, nearer the truth, no character; hence, every 
one sees the necessity of sl parti/ name, if only to live 
by in the community; for there is the formahst in 
politics as well as in religion ; regular in giving his 
vote, never failing to observe the day of the election, 
but as for money for the expense of it, not the thou- 
sandth part of a tithe ; the \ote fulfils all patriotism 
with him — he wants no public office — certainly not — 
you only leave him to earn and to save, and he will 
leave it to you to sustain the government to protect 
him in the enjoyment of his earnings and savings — he 
wants no public office — wonderful self-denial ! Wc 
were once the subjects of a prince, the supreme ma- 
gistracy in him as an inheritance, the people privileged 
to choose only a portion, a third branch, of the legis- 
lature ; by the revolution, all power in them ; all offic* 
of their gift; they the "fountain of all honour;'* 
\rhencf' is it, that the same thing which was then so 



63 

nought^ should now, and by the same class, those- 
desirous to be distinguished for their wealth, and 
otherwise for their condition, be so slighted 1 I leave 
this question to the learned scribe and wise disputer 
among us, never at a loss concerning any thing, " the 
subject of knowledge or the subject of being;" but 
it being of some moment, if we are to hope to 
come out right, to see to it a little that we set out right. 
I would recommend to them — they will pardon it, 
should it appear too didactic — to begin with the 
first of the alphabetical rhymes in their Primer,* to 
serve as the ground-work of all explanation of moral 
phenomenon. 

The promontory in the Highlands, called Anto- 
nie's Nose^ after Antonie De Hooge, secretary of 
the colony of Rensselaerwyck. Herman Rutgers, the 
ancestor of the respectable family of the name among 
us, married his daughter and only child. 

The Dutch divided the whole river into Racks, 
Reaches ; there were thirteen in number ; three of 
them, being those only where the portion of the Ri-- 
ver, or distance in it, denoted by each, can now be 
ascertained, will be particularly noticed. The follow- 
ing are the names of others translated from the 
Dutch, and the probable order of them from south to 
north, the Horse reach, the Sail Maker^s reach, the 
Cook'^s reach, the High reach, the Fox reach, the Ba- 
ker's reach, John Pleasure''s reach, the HarVs reach, 
the Sturgeon reach, Fisher'^s reach, and the Fast reach, 
as importing Jirm not swift. 

The Martelaer's Rack, tJie Martyrh reach, the 
* See Ncfte XV. 



64 

short reach instantly on passing West Point. It has 
been said that Martelaer was in use among the 
Dutch, figuratively, to signify contending or struggling, 
as well as suffering. The reach is more at a right 
angle with the general course of the river than any 
other in it, and you may have the wind from the west- 
ward, and still so fair as to lay your course the whole 
of the distance from New- York to Albany, till you 
come to turn West Point, and then right ahead, so 
that you have to heat, and to contend, and striiggle 
with it to weather the high rocky point on the oppo- 
site side of the river. 

Pownal, in the journal already referred to, says, 
•• on having entered this pass," the pass at the Boter 
Bergh, Butter Hill, from its supposed resemblance to 
a roll of butter, " a very peculiar rock, called Mart- 
ler'^s Rock, projects from the east into the river, and 
at the foot of these immense high mountains, although 
it is as high as a sloop's mast, looks like a dwarf or 
mole." The journalist was afterwards governor of 
the colony of the Massachusetts Bay ; and if, judging 
from Martler's Rock and Topang Sea, it should be in- 
sinuated, that seemingly the ministry at home, the 
mode of expression generally used when speaking of 
the administration in the parent country, did not 
always exercise the best care and judgment in choos- 
ing governors for the colonies, it may be conceded, 
and not to be wondered at ; had they been, as we 
have since become, privileged to choose for them- 
selves in their own case, it must be presumed, and to 
borrow the phraseology of that part of the ancient 
writ of election for members of Parliament, doubtless 



65 

intended as admonition to the electors iioni the Lord 
Chancellor, the keeper of the sovereign's conscience, 
it being of his functions to issue it, '* the best, most able. 
and discreet men for business,'^'' would have been 
sought for and preferred. We, however, must do 
ihem the justice, that, as it regarded us they were 
so far mindful of the respect due to us, as never to 
disparage us by placing over us a person of mean con- 
<lition. Indeed, it was something we used to boast ol 
above our neighbours, that of our governors in chief, 
the greater part of them ^ere either noblemen, or of 
noble descent, or of the order of knighthood. The 
Indian name of only one of the whole number has 
<:ome down to us, the name given to Fletcher. The 
occasion is thus related by our historian, among the 
transactions of the winter of 1693 : " The governor 
was a soldier by profession — his extraordinary de- 
spatch up to A.lt>any, on the first news of the descent 
of the Frencbr^and Indians on the country of the Mo- 
hocks, gain^ Ijjm'the esteem both of the public and 
our Indian ^laMi^'i. The express reached New- York 
on the 12th of February, at ten o'clock in the night, 
and in less than three days he embarked with three 
hundred volunteers. The river, which was hereto- 
fore very uncommon at that season, was open, and he 
landed at Albany, and arrived at Schenectady on the 
1 7th of the month 5 but still too late to be of any 
other use than to strengthen the ancient alliance. 
The Indians, in commendation of his activity on the 
occasion, gave him the nam^ of Cai/enguirago, or the 
great swift arrozv''^ — ^A name expressive of the speed 
with which he flew to the relief and succour of his? 



66 

friends and allies ; what an honourable memorial !' 
The corporation of our city, in July thereafter, pre- 
sented " an address of thanks to him for the great 
care he had taken for the security of the province : 
and also a cup of gold, as a token of their gratitude to 
their majesties, for appointing a person of so great 
vigilance, prowess, and conduct, to rule over us." 

We must admit him to have been stout of hearty and 
if correct in judgment, correct to perceive the extent 
of it, and, of course, farther correct, free from pre- 
tensions beyond it, and then, rarely otherwise than 
correct to discern what is fit and commendable, and so, 
ultimately correct both in opinion and conduct, through- 
out, another comphment awaited him far more grate- 
ful. On a subsequent occasion, they attribute '* to 
his prudence, that all their late heats and animosities 
are healed." The governor, the guide, the guardian, 
the father of the people, healing their heats and ani- 
mosities ! how suitably, how worthily occupied ! — the 
*' civil discord,'''^ known as " the troubles in Leisler'^s 
time,'^'^ " the heats and animosities" intended — unhappy 
Leisler! made to suffer for treason, and his heart at 
the time filled with affectionate loyalty to his prince, 
WilHam of Orange, emphatically of glorious memo- 
ry, a deliverer of Europe at the period from the am- 
bition of a ruler of the French, Lewis of Bourbon, 
the fourteenth of the name, aspiring at the empire of 
it universally, and for which his people, in their own 
vanity, and to gratify his, surnamed him great. 

The Lange Rack, the Long Reach, the reach from 
PoLLEPEL Island to the short turn in the river, the 
Krobj Elleboog : the first syllable retained, and the 



67 

^ast translated, its present name, the Crom Elbozv, — 
Lepel is a 5^300/1 — a Pollepel a ladle, and particu- 
larly the one with a short handle for beating the batter 
for the WAFEL ; the resemblance of the island to the 
convex side of the bowl of the ladle, the origin of the 
name : a point in the long reach Danse Kamer, dan- 
cing chamher, still retaining its name. 

WiLTWYCK, the Dutch name for the town of Kings- 
ton — literally Wildwich or Indianwich, The Dutch 
built a redoubt on the bank of the creek, at the land- 
ing, and thence the creek known as Redout Kill, 
corrupted to Rundout Kill, A second company of 
Walloons, consisting of twelve families, came over 
very early, and settled on the southern branch of the 
Redout Kill, and from them called the Waalf. 
Kill, corrupted to Wallkill ^ their settlement is re- 
ferred to in an ancient grant as the Frenchmen'' s 
Land — they gave it the name of the Paltz, the Pa- 
latinate, having probably taken refuge there in the 
first instance : the two islands in the river, Magdalen' 
Island, and Slypsteen, Grindstone, Island, retain 
their Dutch names ; the point projecting from the east 
shore toward the last, its Dutch name Roode Hoeck, 
translated, Redhook — the creek, Roelof Jansen's 
Kill, retaining its Dutch name; as does also the 
creek on the opposite side of the river, the Cat's 
Kill. The following circumstances may, perhaps, 
serve for a probable conjecture whence the name of 
the first of these two creeks — Jan, John, and Roelof, 
some have supposed Ralph, very common Christian 
names ; and, accordingly, not unusual for a number to 
pass by the conbination of the latter, with the patro- 



68 

U}mic iVoni tlie former, Roelof Janae, and the irue 
iiirnaine never noticed — among those, the subjects o' 
\\ie usage, was a Roelof Jansen^ overseer of the 
Orphan Chamber, and so named in the pubhc record?, 
even when mention©^ of him in reference to his trust. 
His widow, in 1638, married to Domine Everardus 
Bogardus, the first minister who came over from Hol- 
land, and sent by the West India Company, they 
claiming to be the Patrons of the Churches in the 
Colony ; the term used in the English law sense, en- 
titled .to present the preacher. The Dutch called our 
Catamount or Panther^ at times, Het Catlos, but more 
generally Het Cat, emphatically the Cat; it is also 
their name for the domestic cat, except when to dis- 
tinguish the male, and which is then called the kater : 
and hence, mistaking the origin of the name, a branch 
of it has received the name of the Kater's Kill. 
The Island between Cats Kill and Hudson, under 
the east shore Vastrick^s Island, so called after Gerrit 
V'astrick. 

Het Klauver Rack, the Clover Reach — the Reach 
at Hudson — the Bluffs^ or terminations of the hills 
ihere, on the east side of the river, called by the 
Dutch the Klauvers, the Clovers, from their resem- 
blance, it is said, to the clover, but whether to the leaf 
or the flower, different opinions. Beeren Island and 
ihe OvERSLAoii, still retaining their Dutch names. 
The Dutch navigators speak of the river Gambia, on 
ihe coast of Africa, as having an Overslagh, a bar. 
at its mouth. 

A few were selected from the crews of the Dutch 
ships which sailed up the river the following year 



69 

after the discovery of it, to remain here a winter 
oven They erected an habitation on the point of 
the island, the southern hmit of the city of Albany, 
and enclosed it with pallisadoes, as a defence against 
the Indians, and it was known as the Kasteel, the 
Castle, Stuyvesant, in his correspondence with the 
government of the Massachusetts Bay, mentions the 
island as still known by the name of Kasteel Island, 
Albany w^as known by the several Dutch names 
of Beverwyck, Willemstadt, and Fort Orange, 
chiefly by the last. It was also known as the Fuyck, 
or Hoop-net ; and a kill is mentioned as there, and 
known as the Fuyck Kill, changed to Rutten Kill, 
an abbreviation of Rutgert's Kill, Rutgeirt Bleecker. 
a proprietor of the ground adjacent to it, the third 
creek from the Norman's Kill inclusive — the creek, 
known as the Vyvde Kill, the Jifth creek, the creek 
at water vleit, literally at the time, water flood, the 
word vleit since rarely in use, the seat of the family 
of Van Rensselaer. The lands immediately opposite 
to Albany, and for a distance along, and from, the 
river, the Dutch denoted as Het Greene Bosch, 
the pine woods, corrupted to Greenbush. The mouths 
of the Mohock they distinguished as the Spruyten. 
corrupted to, and which may also possibly pass for a 
translation, the Sprouts. The larger island formed 
by the Sprouts, they called Walvisch Island, Whale 
Island. "I cannot forbear," says Van Der Donck, 
^' to mention, that in the year 1647, in the month of 
March, when, by a great freshet, the water was fresh 
almost to the great bay, there were two whales, of 
■folerable size, up the river, the one turned back, but 
7* 



70 

the other stranded, and stuck not far iVom tiie grear 
fall of the Cohoes." The arable land immediately 
above, they denoted as the Halve Maan, the half 
moon, from its crescent-like form along the hills on the 
western side. The river from the rapids upwards, 
and for the distance of about twelve miles, the Indian? 
denominated a lake, the Dutch Het Stille Water. 
the still water. The name of the Island of St. Bar- 
tholomew, in the West Indies, now generally abbre- 
viated to St, Barts, so the Dutch Bartholomeus, ab- 
breviated to the first syllable, pronounced Bat, and 
sometimes to the two last syllables, pronounced as il 
one, Mees. Bartholomeus Van Hoogeboom, the 
first who settled on the river above the Still Water : 
ioFin his name, the two names, of Batten Kill and 
Meesen Kill. 

ENGLISH NAMES OF PLACES. 

Few of them ancient. The island in the bay. Lore 
Island, now Bedlow^s Island. Nicolls granted it to 
Needham, and he, within a few days thereafter, parted 
with it to Alderman Isaac Bedlow. Hallett''s Cove, 
on the East river — the first of the family must have 
possessed lands there to some extent, as we find the 
island beyond Hellgate, now Riker'^s Island, called 
Hallett''s Island. The two islands near it, the Bro- 
thers, their Dutch name, the Gesellen, translated. 
The large rocks at the entrance of Hellgate, the larger 
one, the Mill Rock ; the other, the Hancock Rock. 
Frog'^s Neck — Throgmorton, an Englishman, took a 
i;rant for it, under tlie Dutch, 1C43 ; the name abbre- 



71 

vLatedfrom Throgmortoti^s to Throg^s, and finally cor- 
rupted to Frog^s, Neck. The Stepping Stones — rocks 
projecting in a line from the Long-Island shore into 
the Sound, and their tops bare at low water. An In- 
dian origin is asserted for this name, and a tradition 
vouched as the authority, heretofore repeated by our 
Suffolk County men, to their neighbours of Connecti- 
cut, over the way, in retort for the jeer from them, 
that the soil of the eastern part of the island is so poor 
as to be made to produce only meagre hills of Indian 
corn, and it constituting the chief food of the inhabi- 
tants, not uncommon, in a calm time, to hear the samp 
mortars agoing, quite across the Sound. 

It said, that, at a certain time,* doubtless some ages 
ago, the evil spirit set up a claim, against the Indians, 
to Connecticut, as his peculiar domain ; but they, be- 
ing in possession, determined, of course, to try to hold 
it. By Connecticut, the premises in question, is to 
be understood the original Connecticut proper, the 
territory between the oblong, our eastern boundary in 
that quarter, and the Sound ; for had it been known 
to the parties, but which, indeed, was not found out 
by the whites themselves for the first hundred years 
after they succeeded to the occupancy, that Connecti- 
cut was capable of being rolled or strectched out the 
whole breadth of the continent, there would have 
been no need of strife between them; there would 
have been land amply to satisfy both, and scores of 
millions of acres to spare. The surfaces of Connecti- 
cut and Long-Island were then the reverse of what 
they are now. Long-Island was covered with rocks : 

=^- St;e Note XVI. 



72 

Connecticut was free from them. The Indians were 
fully sensible of what they had to dread from such an 
adversary, and accordingly betook themselves to a 
course, not unusual on ccasions of great difficult} 
and danger; they referred the case to the squaws, 
the mothers of the tribes, who, it is said, recommended 
an offer to quit, on being allowed for their betterments 
— a Novanglican law term, devised to signify the dwel- 
ling, and other erections, and comprehending girdling 
the trees to disencumber the land of the wood, by a 
person entering, without title, on land never before 
cultivated, known as nezo, or wild, land, and for which 
he considers the rightful, whenever he shall appear, 
bound to allow him according to their value, to be 
assessed by a jury of the same place, before he him- 
self bound to quit ; on a principle, a kind of corollary 
from the rule, that it is oppressive and unjust that one 
should reap and another have sown, and so it is unjust 
and oppressive that one should inhabit and another 
have built. No answer, as was to be expected, was? 
given to this offer; and the parties, claiming to be 
entitled to the rights of sovereign states, and there 
being no federal court to interpose between them, had 
recourse to the " ultimate means of discussion be- 
tween princes," to arms. Indeed, had there been a 
court, it is to be doubted whether they could have 
been brought to be amenable to it. 

As to the party defendant, the Indian — the man of 
"the Wood ^ a wigwam of bark his habitation, and the 
^kins of the beasts, he tracks or entraps, furnishing 
his coat and his couch ; and, to repeat it as expres- 
sed bv himsrlf. "to divide the land, each to have a 



73 

NUiparate and permanent property in his plantation., 
would be to make him as bad as a white manJ^^ His 
subsistence — in seasons, the return of the inhabitant 
of the pool from the torpor of winter, to furnish his 
mess, an annunciation to him of a respite from starv- 
ing. His hospitality ; the mere effect o{ all things in 
common ; and the aged Sachem, when unable to crawl 
and partake in the wigwam of another, left to starve 
in his own. His fighting, cowardly; rarely, at the 
same moment, exposing himself erect in posture and 
uncovered by a tree, and roasting a prisoner alive, 
festivity ; hence, whence urged to war. With him 
blood for blood, and the tomahawk has been put into 
the hand of the widow to avenge the blood of the 
slain husband. " The native force of his mind unaid- 
ed, his manners unsoftened, and consequently left 
fierce ;" in a word, a savage. The notices on his 
mind of the duty of rendering to another his own, very 
faint, if any ; of an authorized means to enforce it, 
none.* 

I am aware that I am here differing from one among 
•us of celebrity for literature and science, and of whom 
I have presumed to be a follower, with, however, une- 
qual pace, in the humble task I have assigned myself, 
to prepare notes, or collect materials, for the history 
of the State, the place of my birth and residence, for 
the benefit of whoever will undertake the principal 
work, the history itself. The passage alluded to, in 
the volume he has favoured us with, reads thus : "If 
it were made a question, whether no law, as among 
<he savage Americans, or too much, as among the 
♦See Note XVII. 



74 

• ivilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest cril ' 
one, who hath seen both conditions of existence, 
would pronounce it to be the last, and that the sheq> 
are happier of themselves, than under the care of the 
wolves." Now I am quite willing to allow him his 
premises, and in the utmost latitude he may wish, that 
the people are sheep, the leader breaking into mis- 
chief the rest follow, and, it is said, to precipitating 
down a well ; and, in reference to the particular im- 
mediately before us, wholly incapable to take care of 
themselves, and that the administrators of the govern- 
ment are wolves. Will it not then be happier for the 
sheep to employ dogs to take care of them ? No ; for 
in the same pages where we read of ravening wolves, 
we read of greedy dogs. Will it not be the least er?7, 
on the whole, for the social flock to leave the " sweet 
tender grazings of the field," betake themselves to 
the dank wilderness, and there separate each one to 
become solitary ? More strenuously, no ; for whether 
for no law, and so for less evil and more happiness, 
or for less or more any thing else, whatever it may 
be I do not care, I utterly deny man has a right to 

turn HEATHEN. 

As to the other high litigant party ; his hostility to 
courts of justice is notorious, especially where the 
judges are learned, distinguishing, upright, undaunted, 
revered ; they frequently thwart him In some of his^ 
best projects ; where they are of a different character, 
illiterate, and ignorant, and so in proportion, either 
conceited or stupid, or without probity, but with its 
usual concomitant, a consciousness of without re- 
putation for it, and so cither showing assurance or be- 



lb 

tracing cowardice, there he not only tolerates the 
court, he gives it all his countenance and help, be- 
cause theti^ unprincipled advocates, not to be reckoned 
among the least profitable o( his servants, can, un- 
overruled, by confounding truth and error, right and 
wrong, play his part as eifectually to subserve his 
purposes, as if played immediately by himself. 

The parties foreseeing there would be war, were, 
as behooved them, prepared for it. 

The renowned arch-leader, an host in himself, took 
the field alone : and, being an over-match for the In- 
dians in skill and spirit, he at first advanced on them : 
but they having provided there should be constantly 
reinforcements on their march, thereby preserving 
their corps entire, and harassing him incessantly, 
giving him no rest night nor day, he was obliged finally 
to yield to vigilance and perseverance, and fall back : 
he retired collected, and, as usual, giving up the 
ground only inch by inch, and, though retiring, still 
presenting a front wherever attack threatened; he 
kept close to the Sound to secure his flank on that 
side and having reached Frog's Point, and the watei-s 
becoming narrow, to be crossed by the Indians in 
bark canoes, easily to be made in a night, and the 
tide being out, and the rocks showing their heads, he 
availed himself of them, and stepping from one to 
another, effected his retreat to Long-Island. He at 
first betook himself, sullen and silent, to Coram, in 
the middle of the island ; but it being in his nature 
not to remain idle long, and " rage superadded, soon 
roused him and ministered to him the means of re- 
venge." He collected all the rocks on the island in 



76 

heaps at Cold Spiiug, and throwing them in diflcreiit 
directions to different distances across the Sound ou 
Connecticut, covered the surface of it with them, as 
we now see it ; and it has been repeated from the 
whites, the first settlers of the lands at Cold Spring, 
that the Indians to the last who remained, not only 
undertook to show the spot where he stood, but in- 
sisted they could still discern the print of his feet. 
Whether he has ever visited Connecticut since, not 
known ;* if so, it must have been in some borrowed 
form, and his stay short, for we must certainly ac- 
know;ledge that no state in the union can compare 
with her for a steady haj)itual effort to keep the demon 
out, . '* . ;^t-; .y ; - \ .; 

If this tradition be believe^ bjf thp Indians, it serves 
to give us some notion of their gec^gy. Are these 
rocks alluvial ? Whoever has seen them will pro- 
nounce them resembling every thing more than '' the 
smooth stone of the stream." Arc they primitive / 
No : they come from Long-Island. What are they .'' 
Here a defect in the nomenclature ; happily the 
** Greek and Latin fonts" are at baud to supply it. 
Well for our science we have some literature among 
us to draw on for names. 

The English gave to the river the name of HudsonK^ 
River, by way o( continiuil claim, he being of English 
birth. The Dutch insisted that being in their em- 
ploy, and expressly to explore, he was, as a disco- 
verer, to be considered as their subject, and the case 
of Columbus a precedent ; he a native of Genoa, and 
ihc king of Spain taking to himself the bcn-efit of his 
■^ See Note X\ 111. 



/ / 



discoveries^ and none of the European powers gain- 
saying it. Nay, they seem wholly to have overlooked 
their own case ; their sovereign, James 1st, having, 
prior to the voyage of Hudson, " granted all the lands 
along the Coast of North America between the 341h 
and 45th degrees of latitude, and one hundred miles 
into the country, to his subjects, the Patentees of the 
north and south Virginia Patents," he claiming it by 
the discoveries of the Venetian Cabots. 

The colony and its metropohs, called after the 
duke's English title, New-York -, Ulster County, called 
after his Irish title ; King^s and Queen"* s Counties, and 
Duke and Dutchess Counties, so called in compliment 
to Charles and his queen, and to the duke and his 
dutchess ; Duke's County has passed to Massachusetts ; 
Richmond County, the title of a son of Charles ; Orange 
County ; then already a relationship between the 
royal family of England and the house of Orange in 
Holland. The town of Hurley, in Ulster County j 
the name given to it by Governor Colonel Lovelace, 
his family Barons of Hurley in Ireland. Vermont^ 
Green Mountain, and the town of Amenia, in Dutch- 
ess County, Pleasant, if you please, owe their names 
to the fancy of Young the poet, I mean the American, 
not the English, Young ; he had a peculiar facility in 
making English words from Latin ones. In his Poem, 
the Conquest of Quebec, in describing the portents 
he feigned to have preceded the battle of the Plains 
of Abraham, and which, according to his fiction, ap« 
palled the stout heart of Wolfe not a little, the first 
line of one of the couplets, " vulpine ululations, ur- 
.sine growl«," and the two concluding words of the 



78 

next, '• predicting owls," those which preceded have 
escaped my memory, and it is not now in my power 
to recover them ; sad fate for an epic ! " scarce twice 
five lustres past and out of print." Williams, who 
lias written a book, " The Natural and Civil History 
of Vermont," makes honourable mention of him, 
ranking him among the fathers and founders of the 
state, giving due precedence, however, to Ethan Allen. 

ANCIENT NAMES OF STREETS IN THE CITY. 

PearZ-street, its Dutch name translated ; certainly 
the most ancient, and originally extending only to 
Whitehall-street — the name of the latter from the 
fVhitehall Imi, on the west side below Pearl-street, 
the private property of Governor Dongan, destroyed 
by fire, and its ruins referred to in a conveyance, 1 724. 
On the east side from Pearl-street upwards, to at least 
HS far as Stone-stree, Het Steene Straat, perhaps 
so distinguished as for a time the only one paved, 
the Dutch West-India Company had their Packhuy- 
5EN, warehouses, and that portion of it was known as 
the WiNCKEL-straet, shopping-street of the day; the 
ground on the west side open, and a market being 
there, was known as the Marktvelt, the Market Field, 
nnd hence a passage to it from Broad-street, the 
Marktvelt Steegje, Market-Field Lane, The 
Breeds Weg, the Broad Way, at times known by a 
feodal appellation, the Heere Weg, the Lordh Way — 
A branch of it to the North River, Beaver Lane — an 
order, 1656 — ''that the ordinary place, for casting 
anchor in the North River, be before, or near, the 



79 

Beaver Path." Broad-street originally a graft, u 
term signifying a ditch in fortification, but when ap- 
plied to a street, signifying one with a canal in it. 
While a graft, it was also usually known by the 
feodal appellation, the Heere Graft, Lordh Graft : 
and at times also as the Breede, Broad, Graft ; the 
canal extended as far as Beaver-street, and there 
divided into two branches, one to the west, the Bee- 
ver, Beaver, Graft, now Beaver-street, the other to 
the east, the Prinsen, Prince'^s, Graft, afterward 
Prmce's-street, now the eastern portion of Beaver- 
street. The Prince'^s Graft terminated in a Sloot, 
narrow ditch, and there a landing-place for the coun- 
try people coming to market in their canoes, now 
<S/oa^Lane — the whole, the Graft and Sloot, ordered 
to be filled up in 1687, and the street to be levelled 
and paved. The street, communicating between the 
WiNCKEL-straet and the bridge across the Graft, 
Brugge, Bridge, street. The portion of Pearl-street, 
from Broad-street, or the termination of Custom-house- 
street, to at least as far as the first lane or alley, known 
as the Hooge, High, street — the Stadhuy s, City- 
Hall, in it fronting the slip, and the sheriff, 1691, or- 
dered to prepare a ducking-stool, intended to deter 
from scolding, a species of excess of freedom of speech, 
and however it might have suited at the tim.e, cer- 
tainly now, according to some late and highly respec- 
table opinions on the subject of crime and punish- 
ment, a means of restraint too rigorous to compon 
with the mild and free spirit of our republican govern- 
ment. The dwelling-house of Coenr'adt Ten Eyck 
also there, and so the name of the slip Coenties, or 



80 

Coenra'dth, vSlip — his tannery extending to a lane in 
ihc rear, and the hark mill being immediately on tlic 
lane, the English Mill'Sfreet, soon supplanted the 
Dutch Slyk Steeg, Mud-lane, The next portion ol 
Pearl-street, to Wall-street, being open to the river, 
was, like a street in Amsterdam, corresponding in 
situation, called the Cinoel ; the term will lead to its 
derivation, and its derivation to its meaning, the ex- 
(erior, or encircling, street — it followed the curvatures 
of the shore, so that when Wall-street was laid out 
from Broadway, and, where it approached the river, 
widened, some of the lots, in that part, now became 
bounded by it, and hence the name Cingel at times 
applied to both streets, and accordingly lots expressed 
as situate in the Cingel or Wall-street, A line of pali- 
sadoes, and sometimes mentioned as the city-walls^ fron* 
the one river to the other ; at its point on the East River, 
;i work of stone, known as the Half-Moon, and '^ tires 
lor the pitch-pots for vessels permitted to be madc^ 
against it;" its situation, in the present Water-street, 
somewhere between Wall-street and Pine-street ; the 
iine crossed Broadway, so that, continued, it passed 
not many feet north of the north-western corner of 
Prinity Church ; there were two gates in it — one in 
l3roadway, distinguished as the Landt Poort, Land- 
Gate or Port, the other at the Half-Moon, on the 
East River, distinguished as the Water Poort, the 
Water Gate or Port, and at times, and even in grants 
and other documents in English, mentioned as the 
Strand, or East, Port. An order, as late as 1679. 
'• that the gates be locked before 9 o'clock; and 
opened at daylight." Adjacont to the Half-Moon 



81 

was " the Waal, or the place where the ships rodr 
at anchor in the East River" — doubtless, the place 
where goods were landed or shipped off, and hencq 
the name of the WAAL-straet ; very early corrupted 
to W^a//-street. 

A marsh, described, sufficiently for our present 
purpose, as extending from the river to the high 
grounds, the line of the rear of the lots on the north- 
ern side of Pearl-street, between Pine and Fulton 
streets, called Smee's Vly, or De Smee's Vly, and 
therefore uncertain whether the name, or occupation 
of the person intended, Smithes, or the Smithh, Vly — 
Vly, an abbreviation of Valey, Valley, and in use 
with the Dutch here to denote a marsh, our sa/f 
meadow. When the Maagde Padtje, Maiden-lane. 
was continued through to the river, and widened be- 
low Pearl-street for the slip, called Countess^ slip, in 
compliment to the lady of the Governor Lord Bella- 
mont, a market was built there, known as the Vlv 
Market, the market in the marsh, corrupted to the 
Fly Market ; hence, when in the sharp contest here- 
tofore between a New-Yorker and a Philadelphian, on 
the all-important question, in which of their respective 
cities the best fare P and the New-Yorker would boast 
of his hsh, their variety, scores of kinds, their fresh- 
ness, some even alive and gasping in the market, and 
the fact not to be denied, but to avoid the effect of it 
as triumph, the Philadelphian would only, but signili- 
oontly, remind him, that however fresh his fsh might 
be, the flesh he ate during the summer months not 
quite free from taint, for that from the swarms of the 
irjsert itj the principal market it was called emphati- 
8* 



82 

call) the Fly Market; the poor New-Yorker, igno- 
rant of the Dutch language and of the etymologies 
from it, and hence knowing no better than that it was 
the true name of the market, left without a reply, left to 
experience what no one can know who has not ex- 
perienced it, to be obliged in a dilapidation to give iijj 
the point, 

Crown-stvect laid out in 1G94; for a numher of 
years the only street leading from the Broadway to 
the North River — lately changed to Liberty -street, 
American Liberty; the liberty of the revolution,* 
an original liberty ; Eiiglish liberty ; " not to be bound 
hy any laws to which we do not, by our representa- 
tives, consent, and the rcpresentati-ccs privileged to 
originate whatever laws they please ^^^ all beyond il. 
growth, natural it w^ill be admitted, from the inde- 
pendence on our indigenous stock of equality of con- 
dition. The Roman Pilcxis, the cap, the emblem ol 
a derived liberty, a liberty the gift from one to ano- 
ther legally in servitude to him ; if, however, with a 
half disgraceful unacquaintance with our own liberty, 
its origin and its nature, we will still have the Cap the 
emblem of it, then it was not unwittingly observed at 
Lhe time, that, instead of Liberty -street, the change 
would have been more apt from Crown, to Cap. 
street. 

Gold-stveet — the Dutch called the hill there, the 
GouDEN Bergh, Golden Hill ; Cliff-atreei, called 
after Dirk Van Der Cliff; Bcckman, and William. 
-decl*. afler Alderman William Bcckman; John- 

^:^ See Note XI X. 



83 

street, after VoA;i Harpendingh, the donor (o tlie 
Dutch congregation of their grounds in the neigh- 
bourhood ; his escutcheon in their church in WilHam- 
street. Dey street, after Dirk Dey ; fTarren-street. 
so called in compliment to the lady of Sir Peter 
Warren, a native of the city. 

We have seen Coenradt Ten Eyck^ from his resi- 
dence there, giving name to a slip ; in like manner. 
Friend Edzvard Burling, gave name to Burlingh-sWi), 
and Benjamin Peck, to Peck^s-sWp, and Pieter Rocs 
to the Fly-Market, Pieter Rocs' Markt, Peter 
Rosens Market, being the name by which it was at 
first, and continued for some time to be, known. He 
was my father's mothers father; his father, Gerrit 
Jaxse Roos — there are circumstances from which it 
may be inferred the father of Gerrit came over, and. 
if so, I now see in my family the ninth generation 
from the first Dutch colonist ancestor, females of a 
mature age, and probably the intervening period not 
exceeding a century and an half — nine generations in 
a century and an half, not common. The motive 
with me for mentioning this fact, and I persuade my- 
self others will be persuaded I have none other, is, 
that it may be received as doctrinal, and the improve- 
ment of it by our Ccelebses,^ to show the advantage 
of the earliest search for a wife. If the name, Peter 
Rose'^s Market, had been continued hitherto, so as to 
have become sufficient for the intendment he was the 
founder of it, I think 1 might then have ventured to 
f hallenge any *' American Bourbon or Nassau to go 

* See Note XX. 



84 

higher.'' 1 should at least be 6n a par with old 
Witham Marsh, Clerk of the City and County ol 
Albany, who died here about fifty years ago, his 
gravestone to be still seen in Trinity Church-yard, his 
name on it in Law Latin, Withamus De Marisco, the 
rest of the inscription in other Latin and purporting 
'' that by his father's mother's side he was most nobly 
bom ;" the whole by the direction of his will ; also 
among the ways by which a man may bequeath some- 
thing to himself, something to save his name frojii 
heing forgotten, 

DUTCH NAMES FOR THE FISH IN OUR RIVER. 

A FEW only will be noticed — some denoted by 
uiimhers as their names — the Twaalf, the twelve, the 
Streaked Bass^ and the Elf, the Shad — the name of 
the Shad in Dutch is Elft, in German Aloft, and in 
French Alose, all perhaps from the same root; but 
being pronounced here Elf, the number eleven, the 
number itself possibly came to be considered as its 
name, and so led to denote others in the same manner 
— the Drum is said to have been the Dertien, the 
thirteen. V'an DerDonck, speaking of the North Ri- 
ver, expresses himself, it is " seer visryck," literally. 
xery fish-rich — here the Dutch language would seem to 
have the advantage over the English, its capability ol 
composition — het gelt-zucht, themowe2/-/M5i; hex 
HEERScH-zucHT, the sway-lxist ; for a word for the first 
the English arc indebted to the French, covetonsness ; 
tor a word for the other to the Latin, ambition , Myn 
[■]y.ii-:< \ .\M.n)\ honour-/i(unr, the name, or rather appel- 



8.^ 

lation, by which it is peculiarly my honour tohe called— 
no word for it in either of the three languages — an in- 
stance illustrating it — " the disciples were called Chris- 
tians." Speaking ofthe fish inNewNetherland at large, 
and consequently comprehending the Connecticut, he 
expresses himself,"there is also,in someplaces, salmon." 
Extract from the voyage of Hudson as found in Purchas ; 
*' they saw many salmons, and mullets, and rays, very 
great" — the 3d of September, not the salmon season, 
De Laet expresses himself, "Hudson also testifies, 
that with their seines they took every kind of river- 
fish in the river, also young salmon and sturgeon." 
The Dutch, whatever may be the true name of the 
fish in their language, always, at least in this country, 
call the trout, Salmties, little salmon; and they were 
doubtless in abundance at the mouths of the large 
streams issuing into the river. Belknap, and as a/ac( 
appertaining to the life of Hudson mentions, ''that, 
in sailing up the river, he found it abounding with fish, 
and among which were great store of salmon ;" this 
instance of a little wandering however excepted, we 
must do the reverend biographer the justice, that in 
the main he sticks duly close to his text ; and farther, 
that he is concise, both in hjs narrative and in his 
reflections ; and if he possessed the same quality as a 
preacher, perhaps not the least commendable in him, 
for we all know there is nothing so soon apt to tire us 
as a long sermon — I preaching against long preaching ! 
Am I aware my practice counter to ray precept, and 
that the latter of little effect without the former ? I 
yield to m} own admonition — I close. If I have 
heon too verbose, our historian has provided the 



86 

apology for me, '* the indefeasible righi of my pro- 
fession founded on immemorial usage." If I have 
said much, not much to the purpose, 1 prescribe for the 
same privilege here also. My object, as already 
declared, was to save the names of some places in 
our country from the tooth of THiSG-eating time — 
that the memory of them will now be perpetual, 1 
am not entitled even to hope— let it cease ; still " mav 
our country itself be perpetual." May this be with 
me, as it was with the " illustrious and excellent per- 
son." whom I cite, "among my expiring wishes." 



KND OF xMEMOIR 



NOTE S. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

I'he Notes were chiefly, soon after the publication of the Me- 
^loiR, in 1817, as will be perceived from No. I, and others have 
-ince been, and those denoted suppletory, recently, interleaved, in 
manuscript, facing the pages containing the passages to which they 
refer. No. I. itself, however, and No. II, having a general reference 
10 the Memoir, were inseited between the blank leaves preening the 
1 ille-page. 



NOTES. 



No. I. 



mea nemo 



• SeVipta legat, ob hanc rem, 

'^ Quod sunt, quos g;enus hoc minirae juvat, ulpote plure- 
••Culpari dignos." 

W^HEN the Memoir was read, a vote of thank?, 
and an appointment of a committee to obtain a copy 
for publication, followed, as matters of course. In 
consequence of my absence, in Albany, the remainder 
of the winter, the copy was not furnished until in the 
spring ; and, from intervening occurrences, the pubh- 
cation was farther delayed. On the 12th of August, 
the publication still remaining to be commenced, the 
Society passed a resolution, recalling the vote of 
thanks, unless I would submit the Memoir to a com- 
mittee, to expunge from it in their discretion, I can- 
not bring myself to think so meanly of their under- 
standings, as to suppose they were not sensible, at the 
time, that, so far from acceding to the proifer, I should 
forbear from noticing it, farther than instantly to with- 
draw myself from them. 1 mention, in the Memoir. 
•' that the subject furnishes little to please, perhaps 
less to instruct,'''^ The obnoxious passages have never 
been specified; circumstances, however, if the case 
merited it, could be mentioned, from which it might 
with tolerable certainty, be guessed, they were among 
those designed for instruction. It obviously ought not 
i<> be unflattering to me : they have been, and from onl v 



92 

being once heard, when read, remembered and />o/?- 
dered for a full half year. I have understood it is- 
licld among physicians, that the longer the draught, 
pill, or bolus, (and my Memoir, perhaps, something 
not unlike a compound of all three,) is retained, the 
better, if effect is finally produced; and the more 
violent the effect, the more they conclude the drug to 
have been genuine. 

The intent of the above, is to explain whence the 
publication of the Memoir, and not the vote of thanks, 
or even denoting myself a Member of the Society. 
I interleaved a few copies of the first impression of it, 
designed for particular distribution, with notes, in 
manuscript ; none of them, however, as will be per- 
ceived, tending to vary the import of a single sentence 
in the text, which, as it is to be my Memorial, must 
ever remain the same as rearf. 



No. II. 

The Memoir is to be considered as a piece in the 
loom ^ and the subject, as professed, Naincs. to serve- 
only •' as the ivarp for the interwoven woof ^^^ and, to 
compare small things with great, in the famous weav- 
ing match of old, the fair websters had, probably, the 
iike zvarp — "the skill of the goddess-oxe appeared 
in the woof; and the four lessons^ the finish of th<* 
work, decided her victorious." I trust there will no( 
be found, in my piece, a lesson, whether, as senti- 
ment, and not just ; or, as hint, or hit, and not fair. 

There is always an understood limit to the time 
liUowed for discourses, however variously denomi- 
jiated. to be read before a society, or other assemblage 
of persons, convened for the occasion ; hence, as to 
sundry subjects, comprised in the general one, I was 
restricted to mere instances, or examples, to aid as 
inlimations to others- disposed to a farther or mon- 



93 

particular inquiry ; ia short, bat with a saving from 
the imputation of a vanity in the first expression in the 
sentence, I had to make it a multum in parvo. 



No. III.— Page 6. 

From the passages' cited from De Laet and Van 
Der Donck, and from others, relative to it, briefly in- 
terspersed through the pages, and although some are 
not citations, still none wholly without vrarrant, may 
be collected the history of the discovery of the coun- 
try by the Dutch, and the occupancy and settlement 
of it by them ; at least as much of it, very probably, 
as is worth research. 



No. IV.— Page 11. 

Petrus Stuyvesant was the last of the Governors 
of the Colony, under the Dutch. He arrived in 1647. 
and the records of his administration are duly entire 
to serve as proof of character. He was of the profes- 
s-ion of arms, and had lost a hmb in the service ; and 
hence the Indians, at times, in contumely, called him 
Wooden-leg — he being their dread ; not unhke them. 

His skill or experience, and peculiarly his militarj 
habits, must have stood him in very !)eneficial stead . 
in his command here, — being incessantly vexed with 
the marauding clans of the Mohegan family — their 
homes, then, still adjacent to the Hudson and Rariton, 
and intermediate waters. Let a few instances suffice : 
At one time, and w ithin a few weeks after a treaty of 
amity with them, 700 landed at the town, early in the 
morning, without notice, armed with bows and arrows ; 
toward the close of the day they became disorderly : 
and, on the cry of murder, the inhabitants immediately 
betook themselves to their arms, and compelled them 
9* 



91 

10 re-embark and retire, witli the loss of three ol'theii- 
luimber, killed — two of the whites were killed. At 
another time, they made an irruption into the settle- 
ment, the site of the present town of Bergen, burnt the 
houses, killed a number of the inhabitants, and car- 
ried off 100 of them, prisoners. Again; while h<' 
was absent, occupied in reducing the Swedish for- 
tresses on the Delaware, 900 crossed the river, landed 
at Spuyten-duyvel Creek, took post there, and re- 
mained until they were apprised that he had returned. 
Again ; 900 intruded into the town, but perceiving the 
inhabitants prepared to receive them, they, after a 
stay of a few hours, went otT. Orders of the govern- 
ment, during the period, '' forbidding the Skippers to 
sail on the river, unless in companies of three, or al 
least two, yachts, well armed ; and the inhabitants to 
be on their guard against the Indians, and patrol during 
Divine service, ^^er ric^5." 

The claims of his neighbours on the east, the 
whites of New-England, were a source of disquietude 
and perplexity to him. In one of his letters to hi> 
principals, the West India Company, cited by our his- 
torian, he expresses himself, '' You imagine the trou- 
bles in England will prevent any attempt on these 
parts ; Alas ! they are ten to one in number to us : 
and are able, without any assistance, to deprive 
us of the country when they please ; and their de- 
mands, encroachments, and usurpations, give the peo- 
ple great concern ; the right to b(»th rivers, by pur- 
ehase and possession, being our own, without dis- 
pute." This indicates not only his suspicion, but u 
settled apprehension in him, that they meditated, ulti- 
mately, to wrest from the Dutch the whole of their 
possessions here ; and the difficulty of his situation was 
increased by the reflection, that the case, appa- 
rently, admitted of no rule of compromise, or con- 
cessions. Indeed, if there were, he had little to hope 
Jrom good disposition in them ; on the contrary, in 



95 



llie correspondence, between him and them, they. 
coarsely, and as if with design to anger, apply the 
appellation of intruders to the Dutch ; he, however, 
liesitated not a moment to retort it on them in terms. 
The Connecticut men, at one time, charged him, not 
only with instigating the Indians to it, but even with an 
intended personal agency, as an accomplice with them, 
in a plot to massacre all the whites in their Colony, 
and the writer of their History gives the outrageous 
calumny, as a fact, in his narrative. They certainh 
ought, at least, to have supposed for him, that he had 
read his Bible, and heeded its contents ; so that, " be- 
fore going to make war against them, he would have 
sat down and consulted^ whether he were able, with 
his One, to meet them coming against him with their 
Ten,'>' 

The Director, or Governor, and his Council, were 
a Court of Justice in the last resort ; and in criminal 
cases, highly penal, they had both original and exclu- 
sive jurisdiction. It was not unusual with them, when 
differing, to give their opinions seriatim, and in writing, 
and which were entered at large in their Journal. Those 
by Stuyvesant, shew him to have been deliberate and 
impartial in his inquiries, distinct in his perception^;, 
and by no means uninformed respecting the princi- 
ples of criminal jurisprudence. 

Undaunted — Firm ; never abating of steadfastness 
in his purposes — Vigilant ; not a moment without 
heed : and unceasing in his care for the protection, 
and otherwise for the welfare of those in charge to 
him. His administration, perhaps his life, through- 
out, at no time at variance with just principle 
and sound sense. In fine, the whole of the duties of 
the trust, and the whole of his character considered. 
it may be questioned, v/hether the chief magistrac} . 
among us, has ever been confided to an individual 
more adequate to it, or of more worth. 



96 



xNo. v.— Page 23. 

That ilie French, instead of landing at Mallebane. 
to abide there, or pursuing their voyage farther, did 
discern it more eligible to return to Port Royal ; and, 
so discerning, did return, to be ascribed to Proxidena. 
to the Deity; such hi? purpose^ and the mind and 
loill of man subservient to it. What this doctrine / 
May it not challenge denial / If admitted, what noi 
the conclusion'/' 



No. VI.— Page 24. 

The present Constitution — for the thitherto rccci\ - 
t'd ]usi federal exposition of it, as to the soxcreignlif 
of the S7flf/e-Go\ernmcnts in their relation to the 
sovereignti/ o( the General Government; the follow- 
ing extract from a note from the Commissioners, on 
the part of New- York, to those on the part of New- 
Jersey, in tlic conferences between them, 1807, rela- 
tive to the jurisdiction of the Hudson, where it flow.- 
between the two States ; New-Jersey insisting, as one 
ground of claim to it, to the middle of the channel. 
New- York having always exercised it to the shore on 
the New-Jersey side — that she was an independent 
sovereign State — the extract : " New-Jersey was 
always an independent, sovereign State, as against 
New-York both de facto and de jure ; and, on the 
principle of the American Revolution, she was always 
so dc jure, as against Great Britain ; with this excep- 
tion, that (he Prince, possessing the British crown for 
the time being, was her sovereign, entitled to, and ex- 
ercising, the like powers and prerogatives as in Great 
Britian, and of consequence in whom the supreme* 
exe< iiti-.e power was vested, and to whom, as po^- 



97 

scssing especially the fecial powers, as they are some- 
times termed, the powers of peace and war, the duty 
of allegiance was due ; with whose concurrent agenc} 
in her legislature, she could " raise armies, maintain 
navies, regulate commerce and navigation, lay and 
collect duties on imports and exports, and tonnage on 
vessels, naturalize foreigners, coin monies," and assert, 
and vindicate her rights as to her boundaries, and 
which she actually did as to her northern boundary ; 
except the last, however, all the rights or powers here 
enumerated, the indicia of sovereignty, she has, equally 
with the State of New- York and every other State in 
the Union, delegated or ceded to the general sove- 
reignty of the United States, and is now perhaps more 
to be likened to a corporation with certain powers, 
none more plenary than that of life and death for 
breaches of her own internal peace ; and is no other- 
wise indepedent than as she holds such powers inde- 
pendent of the general sovereignty, but still, in a 
sense, at the will of the legislatures or conventions of 
three-fourths of the states." 

Note — suppletory to the above. 

The legislature of Virginia, February, 1786, pro- 
posed to the States, a Convention of Commissioners, 
to meet at Annapolis, in Maryland, in September, " to 
consider how far an uniform system, in their commer- 
cial intercoui'se and regulations, might be necessary to 
their common interest and permanent harmony ; and 
to report an act, relative to this great object, which, 
when ratified, would enable the United States in Con- 
gress assembled, effectually to provide for the same." 
The measure being approved, the legislature of this 
State appointed their Commissioners, Messrs. Duane, 
Gansevoort, R. C. Livingston, Hamilton, and me. 
Mr. Gansevoort wholly declined the appointment: 
and when the time for the Convention to assemble. 



98 

approached, Mr. Diiane gave notice to his colleagues 
of indisposition, and Mr. Livingston of a probable 
detention by business, for some days, at least. I wa*^ 
Attorney-General, and, at the time, in Albany, attend- 
ing the Supreme Court, and it became doubtful, whe- 
ther the public business would not detain me. A 
casual conversation between the late Mr. Justice Ho- 
bart and me, the intended Convention the subject, 
terminated in a conclusion, that the present oppor- 
tunity for obtaining a Convention to revise the whole 
of our mode or system of General Government, by 
confederation or league, ought not to be suffered to 
pass ; that I should consign over the business of the 
court, to some friend to conduct it for me; proceed 
to New- York, and communicate to Mr. Hamilton 
what had passed between us ; which I did ; and he 
instantly concurring, we set out for Annapolis, where 
we found Commissioners from New-Jersey, Penn- 
sylvania, Delaware, and Virginia. Here the same 
being substantially repeated, and there being the hkt; 
instantaneous concurrence, a committee was appoint- 
ed to prepare an address to the States, which was 
reported and agreed to ; the whole in the course of not 
exceeding three or four days, and we separated. 
The draft was by Mr. Hamilton, although not formality 
one of the committee. It is to be found [jrinted, in 
Carey's American Museum for April, 1787 ; and con- 
cludes, '' with a suggestion by the Commissioners, 
with the most respectful deference, of their sincere 
conviction, that it might essentially tend to advance 
the interest of the Union, if the States, by whom 
they had been respectively delegated, would concuj- 
themselves, and use endeavours to procure the con- 
currence of the other States, in Uie appointment of 
Commissioners to meet at Philadelphia, on the second 
Monday in May, to take into consideration the situa- 
tion of the United States, and to devise such farther 
provisions as should appear to them necessary to 



99 

jender the Constitution of the Federal Government 
adequate to the exigencies of the Union." Is this 
entitled to be veiwed as the origin of the present 
Constitution ? 



No. VII.—Page 31. 

We have Milton for it, that Sir He was expressly 
''formed for Contemplation and Valour'''' — has n6t 
Lady She, as often as she has chosen it, shown her- 
self, with her '''Softness and Grace," as potently 
endowed ? 

No. VIII.— Page 49. 

" Homo sum^ humani nihil a me alienum puto.'"' 

I AM a Dutchman, and so think nothing, which con- 
terns the Dutch, of unconcern to me. 

Note to a sermon, in commemoration of the landing 
of the New-England Pilgrims, delivered 22d Decem- 
ber, 1820, by John Chester, pastor of the second 
presbyterian church in Albany : 

" It seems to be admitted, that the captain of the 
ship had been bribed, by some interested persons, to 
land them far north of the place they intended. After 
they had found Cape Cod, they would have gone to 
the Hudson ; but the captain would not proceed ; and 
in a short time the severity of the season made it im- 
possible." 

1 presume it will be conceded to me, that the pas- 
sages in the Memoir, from the historiographer of Con- 
necticut, were utterly unentitled to be otherwise no- 
ticed than they were ; but the Discourse, to which the 
note, the subject of the present note to the Memoir, is 
attached, bespeaking the preacher as possessing, with 
ingenuousness of disposition, and courtesy of man- 



100 

'uers, a correct, cultivated, mind, a charge from him is 
not to pass as unmeriting to be regarded. The an- 
swer, however, will not be laboured. It will consist 
wholly of extracts from Neal's History of New-Eng- 
land, 1 722, and Hutchinson's History of the Colony 
of the Massachusetts Bay, 1 760, which, with the in-' 
ferences they will themselves suggest, and a few I 
may, for the greater certainty, intimate, will, I con- 
tide, suffice to undeceive him. 

Extracts from Neal : — *'0n the 5th August, 1620. 
both -ships, the Speedwell of 60 tons, and the May- 
Flower of 180 tons, sailed, in company, from South- 
hampton, for New-England ; but, before they got to 
Ihe Land's End, Captain Reynolds, master of the 
Speedwell, complained that his ship was so leaky that 
he durst not venture out to sea in her. Upon which they 
put into Dartmouth to have her caulked. They then 
put to sea a second time ; but when they had sailed 
about 100 leagues, Mr. Reynolds alarmed the passen- 
gers again, telling them he should certainly founder at 
sea, if he held on the voyage ; so both ships put back 
again into Plymouth, and the Speedwell was dismissed 
as unfit for the voyage. The whole company, being 
about 120, were now stowed, in one ship, which 
sailed out of Plymouth on the 6th of September, 
and, after a long and dangerous voyage, they fell in 
with the land at Cape Cod, on the 9th of November 
following. Here they refreshed themselves about 
half a day ; then tacked to the southward for Hud- 
son's River, but Mr. Jones, the master, had, it seems, 
been bribed by the Hollanders to carry them more to 
the north, the Dutch intending themselves to take 
possession of these parts, as they did some time after. 
Instead, therefore, of putting out to sea, he entangled 
among dangerous shoals and breakers, where, meetina 
with a storm, the ship was driven back again to the 
Cape ; upon which they put into the harbour, and 
resolved, considering the season of the year, to at- 



101 

tempt a settlement there, and not proceed forward to 
the River." After speaking of the attempt, by Sir 
Richard Grenville, to plant a Colony at Roanoke 
Island, in 1 585, and which finally failed, he concludes 
the passage, " that several other attempts were made, 
in the Queen's time, toward a settlement in these 
parts, but they all miscarried." 

Extracts from Hutchinson : — " Gosnold, an Enghsh- 
man, made a voyage, in 1602, to that part of North 
America since called New-England, and landed on 
the eastern coast, in about 43 degrees north latitude, 
and it is not certain any European had been there 
before him." " He landed on one of the Elizabeth 
Islands, and gave them that name, in honour of Queen 
Elizabeth, and built a Fort, and intended a settlement 
on the island, or the continent near it, but could not 
persuade his people to remain there, and they all re- 
turned to England before winter." " King James, in 
1606, claiming the territory, by the discovery of tlui 
Cabots, granted all the continent of North America, 
from 34 to 45 degrees, which he divided into two 
Colonies, viz : the southern, or Virginia, to certain 
merchants of London ; and the northern, or New- 
England, to merchants of Plymouth — New-England 
to begin at the 40th degree." " Popham and others, 
patentees of the northern Colony, began a settlement 
at Sagadoc ; and the next year, those which survived 
the winter, returned to England; their design of a 
plantation being at an end." " Whether Britain 
would have had any Colonies in America at this day, 
if religian had not been the grand inducement, is 
doubtful. One hundred and twenty years had passed 
from the discovery of the northern continent by the 
Cabots, without successful attempts ; and after re- 
peated attempts had failed, it seems less probable that 
any should undertake such an affair, than it woi^ld 
have been if no such attempt had ever been made." 
• Per&ecutio*v drove one Mr. Robinson and bi» 
10 



102 

church, from England to Holland." " In 1 6 1 7, they be- 
gan to think of removing to America." " The Dutch 
laboured to persuade them to go to Hudson'' s River and 
settle under their West-India Company, hut they had 
not lost their affections for the English, and chose to be 
under their government and protection,'^'' " Some of 
the chiefs of them addressed the King, to grant them 
liberty in religion under the great seal, which he re- 
fused." " They laid aside the design for that year." 
•• In 1619, they renewed their application, and resolv- 
ed to venture, though they could not have a special 
grant from the King, of liberty of conscience." "In 
July, 1620, the principal of them went over to South- 
hampton, where the ships were ready to take them on 
board." " They sailed the beginning of August, but 
were obliged, repeatedly, to put back, and leave one 
of their ships behind, with part of the company, at 
last. They intended for Hudson's River, or the 
coast, near it, but the Dutch had bribed their pilots 
and he carried them farther northward, so that they 
fell in about Cape Cod, and arrived in that harbour 
the nth November." "The harbour is good, but 
the country is sandy and barren. This was dis- 
<:ouraging, but it was too late to put to sea again." 

Extracts from Hutchinson, in continuation : — '• I 
think I may with singular propriety, call their lives a 
pilgrimage, ' tantum religio potuit suadcrc,'' " " It 
was about the 8th or 9th November, before they made 
Ihe coast of America, and, falling more to the north- 
ward than they intended, they made another attempt 
to sail farther southward, but meeting with contrary 
winds and hazardous shoals, they were glad to put 
into the harbour of Cape Cod, determined to winter 
in the most convenient place they could iind. This 
disappointment was grievous to them ; but before the 
spring they considered it as a favourable providence ^ 
they were so reduced in the winter by sickness and 
death, they suppe.scid (hey must have faflen a pi*ey to 



103 

ibe Indians on Hudson's River, where tliej proposed 
to begin a Colony." " The master, or pilot, it is said. 
bribed by the Dutch West India Company, had enga- 
ged, at all events, not to land them at Hudson's River, 
but they were determined on it, and earlier in the 
year he would have found it difficult to have diverted 
them." " The whole number, exclusive of mariners, 
amounted to 101 ; about one-fourth heads of families, 
and the rest, wives, children, and servants." " They 
came out to seek a vacuum domicilium. (a favourite 
expression,) in some part of the globe, where they 
would, according to their own apprehension, he free 
from the control of European joozuer." 

I assume it, that, from these extracts, there is suffi- 
cient, as between the English and the other European 
powers, for the intendment of a dereliction by them, 
previous to the voyage of Hudson, of whatever right 
had accrued by the discovery of the Cabots, at least 
as it respects the territory westward from Elizabeth 
Islands to the Delaware, and the present purpose 
requires no more, and consequently the occupancy of 
the Dutch, rightful. 

The historians furnish no authority for the charge 
of the hrihe^ nor even an intimation how this " thing 
of darkness was brought to light." The two captains, 
doubtless, before their departure from Southampton, 
agreed on a rendezvous on the coast, in the event of 
separating on the passage 5 hence, they must alike 
have been " participants in the crime." One of them 
finally staid behind. Did he, to disburden his con- 
science, disclose it, and, to show the sincerity of his 
contrition, disburden himself of his share of the 
recompense for it ? The voyage laid aside, always a 
return of premium — indeed, may it not be asked, 
whether the narrative, in reference to the fact, th/' 
alleged corruption, is reconcileable with itself through- 
out. The passage expressed, " that they came out to 
seek a vacuum domicilium in some part of the globe 



104 

where they would, according to their own apprehen- 
sion, be free from the control of European power,'* 
certainly merits peculiar notice ; and in my view of 
it, may serve satisfactorily for the inference, that these 
justly styled pilgrims, meritorious beyond commend- 
ation, forsook their homes without reflecting, and not 
unnatural, " distressed and perplexed as they were on 
every side," there was no such refuge, as they sought. 
to be found here, a space unclaimed, unoccupied, 
and exempt from metropohtan control and intolerance, 
for that their sovereign had already granted the whole 
of the coast, with extensive adjacent territory, to their 
fellow-subjects, the patentees, the merchants of Lon- 
don, or the merchants of Plymouth, mentioned b^ 
Hutchinson, so that when they parted from the shores 
of the one continent, it was with no other than a general 
destination to reach those of the other by the most 
direct course the winds should permit ; and assuredly 
we must presume for them, they were wholly una- 
ware, that the instant they landed, with intent to pos- 
sess, they were, by the law which necessarily followed 
them, to be declared trespassers on the property oi 
others. 



No. IX.— Page 44. 

PERjiArs what is already found in the text of the 
Memoir, on the subject to which this Note relates, 
might be deemed suflicient whence to collect the 
whole of the character of the Dutch Colonists ; for, 
if not too far-fetched, may not stability, and espe- 
cially as it regards communities, be considered so the 
greater, as necessarily to contain, or imply, every 
other quality, however estimable, as the less. But it 
having been intimated that, although there is sufficient, 
and possibly some may think even to spare, as to the 
'•Uitiesp the abodes of the ''men,'^^ the inhabitants ^ 



105 

still that a modicum more, as to their ^^ manners,^' 
would not come amiss ; hence, the few following 
paragraphs. 

The distinction between the two classes, under the 
degree of knighthood, and, to borrow the English 
terms whereby to denote them, gentlemen, or those 
entitled to bear arms, to show descent, and yeomen^ 
prevailed in Holland, not less than elsewhere through- 
out Europe, at the period of the settlement of the 
country by the Dutch ; with an exception, therefore, 
of those who came over in public trust, and a few 
more, still capable to trace their family to a colony 
original of note or condition, the others, generally, 
husbandmen, mechanics, or traders ; and therefore, 
probably not more than one, in some scores, a gentle- 
man, in its sense as defined, and so no other ancestry 
to boast, than honest parentage. It may be perceived 
from the text of the Memoir, that I have not an opi- 
nion widely different as to the English colonists — 
''that hoyr&veY faultless iheiT lives diud fidelity, still, 
as to race and revenue, both alike plebeian, and not 
more of nobility in the one than the other." 

Negro slavery, common, at the time, to all the 
colonies on our continent, whichsoever of the Euro- 
pean States the metropolitan — so far, perhaps, in exte- 
nuation. A milder form of it than among the Dutch 
of New-Netherland, scarcely to be imagined. The 
power of the master to punish, understood not to ex- 
ceed moderate correction by stripes. Where a handi- 
craft, there in the same workshop ; where a husband- 
man, there in the same field — the slave merely a fel- 
low-labourer with the master, " fulfilling only the like 
tasJc^"^ — always partaking, and alike without stint, of the 
same fare, the fruit of their joint earnings. Still he 
was a slave, subject to the will of another, his fellow- 
man ; and assignable, as the " beast, bom to bear la- 
bour ;" and surely not among the least of the mercies 



106 

'. alliijg for praise ; it has been given to us in ilics?- 
latter days to see the injustice of the bondage. 

It can hardly be said of the Dutch, they were labo- 
rious — a more qualified term will suit better — they 
were diligent ; at no time wholly idle ; on the con- 
trary, constant and persevering; whatever begun 
always sure to finish it, and nothing ever slighted 
— always to finish and never to slight ; not a little of 
concomitant character imphed in it, and certainly the 
discretion, '' when intending to build, of sitting down 
first and counting the cost." 

Their women, truly assiduous in what appertained 
to them ; witness the well-kneaded loaf, than which a 
not more certain sign of housewifery : and, adepts in 
clecmsing, therefore excelling peculiarly in the dairy ; 
hence, the well-wrought roll, the companion of the 
loaf; bread and butter, the hoter-ham of Holland, con- 
stituting, accordingly, the greater proportion of the 
sohd food of the family. 

The Dutch were upright and undisguised in all 
their intercourse, and hence, the confidence among, 
them with each other, entire. They were frugal. 
Here, possibly, we may hesitate to commend unquali- 
fiedly. Labour is life ; the absence of it, the absence 
of life ; no limit, therefore, to acquisition. The more 
knowledge, the more the means of happiness ; the 
more wealth, the more the means of knowledge. 
This is earning ; but the lesson to save, is to be prac- 
tised with great caution, from its almost inevitable 
tendency to the excess of it, the habit to hoard. The 
prodigal may be reclaimed from " zuaste,''^ but we have 
no instance warranting hope of the miser. 

That the Dutch Colonists should be distant and 
reserved to strangers, and more so if differing from 
them in language, would scarcely be to be censured 
in them; they vvere, however, wholly free trom inci- 
vility or rudeness ; and certainly not wanting in hog 



107 

pitality. The poor, and "especially those of the 
household of faith," indigent communicants, main- 
tained by the congregations ; and, duly mindful of the 
apostolic injunction, the Sunday-gatherings for them 
continued to the present day. 

A remissness, it must be acknowledged, in them; 
no provision for the education of their youth. The 
prevalence of their language, for a great length of 
time, even after the surrender of the Colony to the 
Enghsh, and their blame-worthy attachment to it, 
were impediments, to be left to time to remove ; and 
to which may be added, that, prior to the close of the 
war, in 1763, comparatively few strangers of British 
birth came to reside here. It was from a necessity. 
imposed on the New-England Colonists, but assuredly 
not detracting from the merit of it, to train and rear, 
from among themselves, those who should be qualified 
to contend for the faith, held, by them, the same 
"once delivered to the saints." Not so with the 
Dutch. Their removal hither, wholly spontaneous ; 
the sole inducement, gain^ either as traders or culti- 
vators. Their clergy, accordingly, during the period 
alluded to, natives of Holland, and there educated. 
At the same time it ought to be mentioned to their 
credit, that their first care, after providing for their 
own immediate safety and subsistence, was, to form 
themselves into congregations, build churches, and 
call ministers. The call always addressed to the 
Classis of Amsterdam, the churches in the Colonies 
being considered as confided to their rule and care. 
The Dutch clergy being diligent as catechists, the 
doctrines of the mother-church have through the suc- 
cessive generations, continued to be taught with unde- 
viating fidelity and purity ; and on a marriage, and as 
an article of indispensable garnishment in the house, 
the foho Bible was procured ; literally in boards, and 
with clasps of brass correspondently stout ; and read- 
ing it in the family, the us)ial Sunday evening cm* 



108 

ployment, and, with the text, always the marginal 
notes, occupying the greater portion of the page : 
and still to be resorted to as just comment. 

They were temperate. Indeed, and in a word, it 
may safely be said of them, they were without vice ; 
and perhaps, peculiarly possessing a wisdom, doubtless 
unspeakably beneath that which is from above, and, 
dlthouo^h negative, still having its value, the "first," 
or highest " wisdom" of Gentilism, they were withovl 
folly; it being certain that conceit, vanity, affecta- 
tion, caprice, or nonsense, in any of its endless mo- 
difications, if ever found among the Dutch, rarely so. 

Such were our grandsires, the Dutch Colonists : 
Uieir grandsires, the first in the history of nations, 
who resisted intolerance and oppression and suc- 
ceeded. No other boast here than that, it is yet to 
happen that their sons have failed to prove themselves 
worthy of their lineage. 



No. X.— Page 44. 

The pales, enclosing the City Hall, have, since the 
Memoir, been removed, and their place supplied by a 
railing of iron ; and, in addition, it is now farther to 
be hid within rows of trees ; a proper precaution ; be- 
cause should we apprehend the elfect of a view of it^ 
ALL AT ONCE, might bc more than we could well bear, 
we may then take it peicc meal, by peeping from dif- 
ferent points, over the railing, through the openings : 
and which will bc quite enough to satisfy us, if curious 
to know it, whether it actually rests on a base, or, like 
the mausoleum, the wonder, it is borne in the air. f 
believe we are alone in the practice of emhowering 
our public structures of style — perhaps entitled to 
the very merit of having introduced it. The Dutch 
Chuch, in William-Street, a rare specimen of correct 
architecture — rare, as possessing simplicify and imil^, 



109 

and peculiarly appropriate for a Christian Church : 
where it is not only permitted to the votaries, but en- 
joined on them, to assemble within the temple ; hence 
the Portico of the Pagan, for the accommodation of any 
to remain without, not there. This building, so cre- 
ditable to us, is to be sought for in a grove of Button- 
zoood, " Abraham planted a grove, and there called on 
the name of the Lord." Afterward expressly forbid- 
den to his posterity ; " thou shalt not plant there a 
grove near unto the altar of the Lord ;" from its 
tendency, a rule for estimating whether we are to do, 
or to forbear ; the worth of it seldom estimated ; to 
repeat it, from its tendency to fallacious, hence hurt- 
ful, associations — the gloom of the shade— the gloom 
of the gothic cloister — their effect on the imagination to 
pass for real solemnity of mind — the " contemplations'^"^ 
of the inmates of the last declared " heavenly !" "All 
the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to 
thy seed for ever 5 and I will make nations of thee ; and 
kings shall come out of thee ; and I will establish my 
covenant to be a God unto thee, and thy seed after 
thee." These promises, and the command, " thou 
shalt not,'^'' notwithstanding, the heirs of the promises 
would have their groves for their false worship, until 
•' they were smitten for it, and scattered beyond the 
River." " There have been converts from atheism ; 
from superstition none, or very rare." More of truth 
and force in this sentiment, more cases where appli- 
cable, than, perhaps, we are aware. 

No. XI— Page 47. 

" I BEQUEATH my poHtical opinion,'''* Is not this, I 
bequeath my political wisdom ? I bequeath it to my 
" country,'''' Except writing one's own Life, can a 
weakness, or vanity, beyond it, be conceived ? Does 
not the opinion resolve itself into this — that, to pre- 
serve the government, /ree, you must contrive it to go 

n 



no 

without the impulse of hire, for labour F Another 
SAGE, in mind, morals, and religion, about of the same 
mould; in science about of the same attainment; 
knowing something of almost all things, master, tho- 
roughly so, of none, referred to in the sequel, as will 
be perceived, and also in reference to the subject of 
government, and especially as discoursing gravely 
about the happiness of a flock of sheep, and their be- 
ing under the care of the wolf, and their option to 
withdraw from it, and take care of themselves, pro- 
nounced " our Franklin, at fourscorce, the ornament 
of human nature." 

Note — Suppletory to the above. 

We have Franklin-Counties ; Franklin-Towns . 
Franklin-Streets ; Franklin-Banks ; Franklin-Mar- 
kets ; Franklin-Hearths ; Franklin-Gridirons ; in short. 
Churches hitherto excepted, we have scarcely a 
genus of entity among us, without a species, or at least 
an individual of it, and the Doctor's name not adjec- 
ilvely prefixed, in memorial of his own excellence, and 
thereby to " signify it as a property or quality in the 
fhing named f^ and finally, as if to crown it, one of the 
first rates in our navy, named after him, although not 
bred to the sea, or ever in battle ; on the contrary, his 
general deportment indicated a preference for "^a- 
civity ;" so that it would not have been more out of 
the way for the administration, had they been of a re- 
ligioso sect, to have called the ship after Job, as the 
most patient, or after Moses, as the most meek, of men. 
Congress, by declaring the subjects to furnish the 
names, all of them importing place, in exclusion of 
person, have wisely guarded against sectarian predi- 
lection in future. 

Extract from Mr. Webster's Discourse, delivered at 
Plymouth, 22d December 1820, in commemoration 
of the first setllcmcnt of New-England : 



Ill 

' When the first century closed — the crepuscular 
light had begun to flash along the cast of a luminary ; 
and which was to mark the Age, with its own name, 
as the Age of Franklin." 

The Doctor, some where, but as I do not, on search, 
iind it in either of his two Lives ; the one, the little 
lesson-manual by himself, mentioned in the text of the 
Memoir 5 the other, his Biography, by his Grandson, 
since his decease ; a compilation of correspondence 
and pieces, six volumes octavo^ I presume I must 
have met with it in some fugitive letter, among those 
we have seen occasionally, within the few last years, 
reprinted in our public papers ; " one, and from which, 
to learn the others,'^'' will, with a few brief remarks, 
be subjoined to this Note. 

The passage alluded to, was to the purport, thai 
his mother told him, if he were diligent to improve 
himself in learning and knowledge, he might come to 
be the companion of Princes ; and which he conceived 
to have actually taken place, when in England, the 
beginning of the last reign, as agent for Pennsylvania, 
he was invited to the dinner given by the City of 
London to the King of Denmark. 

Little did he dream of the more ample accomplish- 
ment of the maternal promise or prediction, in reserve 
for him. Hitherto he had, and on a mere formal, or 
official, " bidding," as a Colony Agent, his light bor- 
rozved, been a guest at the same feast made for roy- 
alty ; he is now, and for attributed personal pre-emi- 
nence, his lustre his own, to be raised to the very 
peerage itself of Emperors and Kings. We have 
heard of an Age, called after Augustus of Rome ; oi 
one, called after a Lewis of France ; hereafter, we 
are to hear of one, called after Franklin of America : 
and a descendant of the heretic-banishing, infidel- 
anathematizing, puritan forefathers of New-England, 
who, on landing at Plymouth, as has been carefully 
handed down to us, for the last fifty of the two hun 



112 

died }ears IVom the event, all stepped on the same 
rock, presenting himself as the God-father, giving 
the name. The rock has lately been weighed from 
the ooze, and brought high and dry ashore ; hence, 
the yearly visit to it since. In European Christendom, 
pilgrimages may be said to have gone into disuse for 
ages. 

But, may it not be asked, whether there is not an 
objection to our taking on ourselves to have an age, 
and to be suspected as not having occurred, or, if so, 
not fully considered ? To illustrate, by the Augustan, 
or Roman, age, there not having been a due " series 
of years, or flight of times," to pronounce on the 
immortality of the French age ; and so, at present^ 
not competent to serve as precedent. 

The Augustan Age has become famous, from the 
writers who flourished in it ; and the name, compU- 
mental to Augustus, whose reign the era, and to 
whose patronage it is intended to be ascribed, that 
they were so numerous, and every of them so excel- 
ling ; we, however, select the patron from the very 
ranks of the writers themselves ; and, I should not be 
surprised, if we were to have the whole European 
monarchy of letters on our backs, for the innovation, . 
not less unclassical than incongruous. For, granting 
we have the requisite complement of them, even with 
the Doctor himself to spare, and of due celebrity to 
pass as, and for, the American Classicks j still, the 
specified correlative, regalia, prince, reign, and pa- 
tron, wanting, the objection remains, and we, of 
course, as yet, not susceptible of an age. 

The letter, above referred to : 

" The following is a letter from Dr. Franklin to the 
celebrated Mr. Whitefield. His ideas of religion are 
given in a more favourable light than some have been 
willing to place them. His tenets were at variance 
with the established faith. No person, however, can 



113 

doubt that he possessed the essentials. If charily is a 
Christian virtue, then Frankhn's Hfe illustrated it." 
Thus far the Editor. Now the letter: 
" For my own part, when I am employed in serving- 
others, I do not look upon myself as conferring 
favours, but as paying debts. In my travels, and 
since my settlement, I have received much kindness 
from men to whom I shall never have any opportunity 
of making the least direct return, and numberless 
mercies from God, who is infinitely above being bene- 
fitted by our services. These kindnesses from men. 
I can, therefore, only return on their fellow-men ; and 
I can only show my gratitude for these mercies from 
God, by a readiness to help his other children and my 
brethren. For I do not think that thanks and com- 
pliments, though repeated weekly, can discharge our 
real obligations to each other, and much less to our 
Creator. You will see, in this, my notion of good 
works ; that I am far from expecting to merit heaven 
.by them. By heaven, we understand a state of hap- 
piness, infinite in degree, and eternal in duration : 1 
can do nothing to deserve such rewards. He that, for 
giving a draught of water to a thirsty person, should 
expect to be paid with a good plantation, is modest in 
his demands compared with those who think they de- 
serve heaven for the little good they do on earth. 
Even the mixed, imperfect pleasures we enjoy, in 
this world, are rather from God's goodness, than our 
merit: how much more such happiness of heaven. 
For my own part, I have not the vanity to think I de- 
serve, the folly to expect, nor the ambition to deserve, 
it ; but, content myself in submitting to the will and 
disposal of that God who made me, who has hitherto 
preserved and blessed me, and in whose fatherly 
goodness I may well confide, that he will never make 
me miserable ; and that even the afflictions I may, at 
any time, suffer, shall tend to my benefit. The faith 
11* 



114 

you mention, has certainly its use in the world ; I do 
not desire to see it diminished, nor would I endeavour 
to lessen it in any man. But, I wish it were more 
productive of good works, than I have generally seen 
it : I mean real good works : works of kindness, cha- 
rity, mercy, and public spirit ; not holiday keeping, 
sermon reading, or hearing ; performing church cere- 
monies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries 
and compliments, despised by wise men, and much 
less capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of 
God is a duty ; the hearing and reading of sermons 
may be useful, but if men rest in hearing and praying, 
as many do, it is as if a tree should value itself on 
being watered and putting forth leaves, though it 
never produced any fruit. Your great Master thought 
much less of these outward appearances and profes- 
sions than many of his modern disciples. He prefer- 
red the doers of the word to the mere hearers — the 
son, that seemingly refused to obey his father, and 
yet performed his commands, to him that professed 
his readiness, but neglected the work; the heretical, 
but charitable, Samaritan, to the uncharitable, though 
orthodox Priest and sanctified Levite ; and those who 
'^ave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, raiment 
to the naked, entertainment to the stranger, and relief 
to the sick, though they never heard of his Name, he 
declares shall, at the last day, be accepted, when those 
who cry. Lord! Lord! who value themselves upon 
their faith, though great enough to perform miracles. 
but have neglected good works, shall be rejected. 
He professed that he came not to call the righteous, 
but sinners to repentance ; which implied his modest 
opinion that there were some, in his time, who thought 
themselves so good that they need not hear even him for 
improvement ; but, nowadays, we have scarce a little 
parson that does not think it the duty of every man, 
within his reach, to sit under his petty ministrations. 



115 

and that whoever omits them, offends God. I wish, 
to such, more humihty, and to you, health and happi- 
ness, being your friend and servant." 

I give the above, as I found it in a Cazenovia paper. 
1818. Another copy appeared in an Albany paper, 
1820, with the Doctor's name subscribed, and a date. 
as to time, 1 752 ; but without a direction. A short 
introductory paragraph, wanted in the copy here 
presented, mentions it as having been written on the 
fourth day from the date of the one to which it pur- 
ports to be an answer. Rather off hand. It is obvi* 
ously studied. The Doctor's art has here failed him 
'^io conceal his aH." In 1752, the Doctor was in 
America, and Whitefield in England, so that the sug- 
gestion of the Cazenovia editor, that the latter was 
the correspondent, not possible to be true. These 
two copies must have been reprinted from distinct 
papers, serving as originals to the respective editors. 
The Doctor himself, doubtless, furnished the copy, in 
the first instance, for pubUcation ; abundant proof be- 
ing to be found, in Almanacks and newspapers, of his 
readiness to comply with the rule, " for you to know 
is nothing, unless you give it to another, that he also 
know what you know;" indeed, I presume there 
never was a previous letter, and so the whole di fable. 
to be denominated the apologue of the Doctor and 
his /e/^ne J correspondent — wholly ?ieto ; a species of 
the for ensick j and the question the Doctor makes his 
correspondent propound, by way of challenge, is. 
whether faith, without works, not preferable to works. 
without faith ? The Doctor negaiur. Now, as faith, 
without works, is dead, and so no faith ; and as works, 
not done in faith, are not acceptable, and so no works ; 
the terms explained, the question vanishes. There 
is, in one view of them, a difference, material in the 
question, of more or less merit — if such a question 
there can be ; martyrs have suffered for the faith 
which "came to them by hearing;" such the ap- 



116 

pointed means ; works^ and peculiarly those specified 
by the Doctor, and distinguished by him as real good 
works, have, as they ought to have, i\\e praise, and so 
the reward, of men ; but hence, not possible the doers 
should ever be called to suffer for them. The Doctor 
vouches THE GREAT TEACHER, " that the doers are to 
be preferred to the hearers of the word." True : 
but why not vouch him, when replying to the inquiry 
of his followers, " what they were to do to work the 
works of God ?" The reply — "The work of God is 
to believe on him whom he hath sent." To have 
cited this teaching, as it would have been an acknow- 
ledgment of faith in the messenger, and, of course, 
in the message, " that he came to save that which was 
lost," would have been, in the phraseology of dispu- 
tants, and now, from use, legitimately English, a/*e/o 
de se ; the very pith of the moral, or rather, inteiprc- 
tation, of the Doctor's/«6/e being, man never lost j 
never a lapse of him. Peculiar praise oi good works. 
when in contrast w\th faith, and especially, as in the 
present instance, if an entire silence, at the same 
time, as to those which arc evil, ever to excite suspi- 
cion, there is something rt'?7z/y intended, and you would 
never have persuaded the jealous, shrewd, earnest, 
puritan, the pilgrim, otherwise than that, in the Doc- 
tor' 8 preach?nent about them, he saw the very clef I 
track throughout. There is a rule, " that what you 
dare not do directly, you shall not betake yourself to 
do it obliquely,'''' Rather strict for constant observ- 
ance — an avowed, or direct, attack on Christianity, 
not always safe. These parsons, with their lank 
heads, and their long prayers, ''filed zuith flatteries 
and compliments to the Deity i'''^ flatteries and compli- 
ments to the most high and all-perfect ! When the 
pen indited this sentence, ought we not, in charity, to 
suppose an entire suspension of thought for the mo- 
ment? These parsons, to repeat it, " /^///e," and big, 
like their predecessors of old, at times thwarting and 



117 

troubling the philosophic Israel ; a host, and not a lew 
of them, masters in the science of argument, the 
Doctor, therefore, aware, not discreet to measure wea- 
pons with them ; the more so, as skill in eclecticks, to 
discern the relation hetweenpremises and consequence, 
not his best skill. Take a sample from his reasonings 
before us. " I have not the vanity to think I deserve 
heaven as reward, nor the folly to expect it as of merit, 
but content myself in submitting to the disposal of 
that God who made me, and who has hitherto pre- 
served and blessed me, and in whose fatherly goodness 
I will confide, that he never will make me miserable ;" 
so that, because his Maker has blessed him in a state of 
probation here, therefore he will bless him in a state of 
retributionheTediiter — how logically just the deduction / 
To notice, and merely to notice, a single expression 
more, and to finish : " God will never make me mise- 
rable." Whence has Doctor Franklin it, that the 
Creator ever makes his creatures miserable ? Is not 
the misery of maii, wholly chargeable on himself^ no 
faith in the revelation, his Creator has vouchsafed him 
of the means to be saved from it ? 



No. XII.— Page 49. 

The Bank of New- York was not incorporated by 
the legislature until 1791, a period of six years from 
its establishment, during which it was a partnership, 
the stockholders, as partners, liable in their several 
persons and estates, on the notes or bills ; still doing 
business, with like credit, and like profit to themselves 
and accommodation to the public, as afterwards. 
The restraining act was passed in 1 804 ; and, in the 
intermediate time five other banks were incorporated, 
and they have multiplied since, to the session of 1816. 
inclusive, to twenty more ; and of them a number, I 
leave it to every one to inquire, and ascertain it for 



118 

himself, where, it is believed, in the community, the 
incorporation proceeded not from worthy motives, in 
those who granted it, or was obtained by lamentably 
unworthy means, by those who applied for it — such 
among the effects of a law, in unnatural or arbitrarv 
restraint of individual faculty and volition — that the 
banks have refused to redeem their notes, among the 
effects of incorporation — one proof among others, 
and not to be numbered, that abuse and corruption 
must be the effect, whenever the government, and the 
more free the fornix the danger of the evil not less to 
be shunned, the evil itself being surely more to be 
dreaded, will not be regardful to limit itself, in the 
exercise of the powers entrusted to it, to their simple, 
sole, legitimate, object. Protection ; to defend me 
against hostility from without, against violence and 
fraud from within, and to provide the requisite means 
for me to compel others " to render to me my own ;" 
0. due administration of justice, and then only to be 
superadded those regulations, no term more apt, 
occurring, which utility/, restricted in its sense, to 
scarcely more than the opposite of inconvenience, and 
all partaking of rule, may suggest — this the whole 
necessary, the whole I am entitled to require from 
the government and consequently the whole it is held 
to afford to me — this the measure between us of my 
rights and its duties, and "the law of these duties^ 
fulfilled," the government will find it has nothing to 
spare for supererogation. 

Note — Snppletory to the above. 

Protection against violence and fraud, and none 
against slander ? None ! Each one to be the keeper, 
and so the protector, of his own character. Let him 
be what he ought to be ; diligent, temperate, upright, 
heedful; his life "the shield to quench the dart." 
Was it ever known, that a person of character, truly 



119 

so, went to law for it ? A solecism in conduct. '' Ac- 
tions on the case for words,'^'' still a title in our code. 
Protection, the sole duty of the government ? Most 
assuredly — for what is government ? May it not be de- 
fined in a sentence ? The best practical combination 
of private or separate right, with public or aggregate 
force. Why the entire surrender of private or sepa- 
rate property to the government ? For the sake of 
aggregate force. Why aggregate force ? For the 
sake of mutual safety. If so, then when the govern- 
ment requires from me a portion of my property, or 
''substance,^'' for any other purpose, doth it not usurp 
on my private or separate volition or option, whether 
I will, or will not, contribute, and especially if the 
purpose partake of eleemosynary ? surely, alms, falsely 
so called, if by coercion, A surrender of my life to 
the government ; entitled to require from me to ex- 
pose it to the forlorn hazard. The same question 
occurs here, and the same answer. For what pur- 
pose ? General or mutual safety. In a word ; why 
the public purse at the disposal of the government ; 
or, to make the illustration more apt, to substitute the 
term, "ruler?" Because the trust in him "to bear 
the public sword, and not in vain, but as the means to 
enable him to bear it as a revenger, to execute wrath 
on those that do evil." 

It has been stated, that one branch of protection, 
is, " to provide the means to compel others to render 
to me my own,'''' Are not courts of justice emphati- 
cally the means ? What is a government, and however 
to be preferred as more free, not having an enlight- 
ened, impartial, efficient administration of justice? 
He, who, though he have the utterance of an angel, 
a knowledge to understand all mysteries, a faith to 
REMOVE MOUNTAINS, a beneficeuce to others to the 
impoverishment of himself, and the zeal of a martyr, 
what is he if he have not love ? Sound ; noise ; nay. 
nothing. 



120 



No. XIII.— Page 52. 

"In Congress — 1th August, J 783. 

'* Resolved, unanimously, (ten States being pre- 
!?ent,) that an Equestrian Statu .e of General Washing- 
ton be erected at the place where the residence of 
Congress shall be established — that it be of Bronse — 
that the General be represented in a Roman dress, 
holding a truncheon in his right hand, and his head 
encircled with a laurel wreath — that it be supported 
by a marble pedestal, on which are to be represented, 
in basso releivo, the following principal events of the 
war, in which the General commanded in person, viz : 
the evacuation of Boston — the capture of the Hes- 
sians at Trenton — the battle of Princeton — the action 
of Monmouth — and the surrender of York. On the 
upper part of the pedestal to be engraved as follows : 
The United States, in Congress assembled, ordered 
this Statue to be erected in the year of our Lord, 
1783; in honour of George Washington, the illus- 
trious Commander in Chief of the Armies of the 
United States of America, during the War which vin- 
dicated, and secured, their Liberty, Sovereignty, and 
Independence." 

The inquiry — Whence this Vote or Vow, still un- 
fiilfilled ? 

The answer — According to the Memoir, the money 
<Tru(ls[ed» 



"is 



No. XIV.— Page 59. 



y^- 



Quicmiquc vult — the name, in churches havin 
iiuiis, for the Athanasian Creed, being the initial words 
of the Latin version of it. The Episcopal Conven- 
tion, in this country, on a revision of the Articles oi 
Religion, established by them, omitted it; hence it n<» 
longer serves as one of their confessionals, or tests. 



121 

No. XV.— Page 63. 
The Rhyme — 

" In Adam's fall, 
We sinned all." 
Qu» — Can you ever convince the scribe and disputer, 
that such the " origin of evil," as long as their learn- 
ing and wisdom fail to serve their chief purpose, to 
them, to convince them how much they lack both ? 

No. XVI.— Page 71. 

The fact of a tradition among the Indians oi 
Long-Island, of a war between the Evil Spirit and 
those of Connecticut, about the territory, and of his 
being worsted, and retreating to the Island, crossing 
the Sound at Frog's Point, by stepping from rock to 
rock, it happening to be low water, and collecting the 
rocks on the island in heaps at Cold spring, and, out 
of revenge, throwing them across the Sound, defacing 
Connecticut with them, as we now see it ; and then a 
tradition among the whites, that the Indian tradition 
of the passage of the Sound suggested to the first set- 
tlers the name for the line of rocks, the Stepping 
Stones, and that the Indians whom the whites found 
there, insisted they could still see the print of the feet 
on the shore, I had from the late Mr. L'Hommedieu, 
a native of the Island ; and that not uncommon, even 
in his time, whenever a Connecticut man and a Long- 
Islander met, and a mug or two of cider between them, 
to hear the jeer from the one, and the retort from the 
other ; so that possibly I have, in proportion, as much 
fact for my episode, as V^irgil, my precedent, as will 
ha^e been perceived, from my motto, for the choice of 
the subject, J^ames, had formost of his — ^like him, foo, I 

12 



122 

have my hero, the Dutch, and have had also to distiii- 
guish, at times, between the pius ^neas and the dux 
'^ 'XU:oja»fto ; witness their religious toleration for the 
sake of trade, and Skipper Block's Helle-gSit, 



On conversing with some who have perused the Me- 
moir, it would seem that an object for which the war, 
between the Indians and the Evil Spirit, has a place 
in it, the lesson, the allegory, of the warfare between 
man and the adversary, the enemy of his peace and 
bliss, and what, and whence, the recruits to " keep his 
heart and mind" entire for the watching and enduring. 
if to hope to prevail, had escaped heed. 



No. XVII.— Page 73. 

This sketch of the Indian, is from personal observa- 
tion or knowledge, having been repeatedly in the 
commission to hold treaties with them ; not that I 
have witnessed^ their torments to their prisoners, or a 
looman the avenger of blood, or the frog to serve for 
food — the first is of universal notoriety, the second I 
had from the late Mr. Staats of the Hooge-bergh, 
about four miles below Albany, adjacent to the river, 
where the scene was transacted, my informant, at the 
time, a lad in the family of his father there — the vic- 
tim sat on a log at the shore, his hands covering his 
face, and his elbows resting on his knees — the w^oman 
recoiled twice, but urged on by the men, and with 
sternness, she advanced a third time, and at the first 
stroke, sunk the tomahawk into his skull. She shriek- 
ed and fainted — for the third, I might also rely on no- 
toriety ; I still vouch the late General Schuyler and 
Judge Duane ; the latter had it from the late Sir 
William Johnson, with this addition, that not unfre- 
iinent with them to (:nri<^h the mrss- with the lice, ih*/ 



123 

product of tlieu? own laziness and tilth — should the 
whole be conceived a little coloured, perhaps venial ; 
it being only thereby to expose, to a little more effect, 
tlie affected admii^ation, of the philosophic among us. 
of the man of nature. 



No. XVin.-^PAQE 76. 

It appears 1 read my Memoir at the very moment ; 
the demon having since, not only visited Connecticut, 
but it is feared, taken up his abode there ; those, in 
opposition to the federal party, have, under a new 
name he has instigated them to assume, Toleraiionists. 
prevailed at last in the elections throughout — the salu- 
tary habits of this people — coeval with them as a 
comm\imty,^-steady in them from the beginning — 
thanks to the Pwritamism of their Pilgrim forefathers, 
as they at times denote them, for both the habits and 
their steadiness in them — hitherto their />nV:?e — all, all. 
extinct ! 



No. XIX.— Page 82. 

In addition to the passage in the text, in Italics, as 
to the principle of the Revolution, the ^om( between 
the Colonists and the mother country, the following 
further extracts from the Note mentioned in Note 
No. 6 ; New Jersey, as a distinct ground of claim, 
insisting on a sovereignty as derived from the Revolu- 
tion — the extract : 

" Neither will any supposed change in the condition 
of New-Jersey by the Revolution affect the case. 
The Parliament, or Legislature, of the mother country, 
claimed a right to pass laws binding on the Colonies. 
The Colonists claimed to be entitled to like rightf= 



124 

wiih their fellow-subjects in Britain, and so not bound 
by any law to which they did not assent, or, in effect, 
to be sovereign, or independent of the parliament. 
Attempts were made to define the nature or extent of 
the sovereignty to be retained or enjoyed by the Co- 
lonies, or to establish 2i fundamental between the Par- 
liament and them, and they to remain members of 
the empire, thereby to preserve the unity of it ; all of 
which failed, inasmuch as they would only have ter- 
minated in the incongruous and futile mode of govern- 
ment, an imperium in imperio ; and there being no 
alternative between an absolute submission to the will 
of the Parliament and the empire remain entire, and 
an absolute independence of such will, and, of course, 
Cci>f severance of the empire, the Colonists resolved on 
the latter. Such is the simple principle of the Ame- 
rican Revolution. The question was hmited as to 
parties, it being between the Parliament and the Co- 
lonists, and not between the Colonists themselves; 
and also as to its subject, it being a more legal ques- 
tion arising in the British Constitution. 

Note — suppletory to the above. 

Perhaps the question may more precisely be stated ; 
how the principle in the British Constitution, in regard 
to the people, they viewed as represented in the House 
of Commons, a branch of the legislature, and so deno- 
minated when to be distinguished from the King and 
the Lords, the other two branches, legislation and 
representation inseparable, is to be applied to the peo' 
pie of the Colonies, in their relation to the people of 
the metropolitan community, it not being practicable 
for them to participate in the representation "! Wholly 
inapplicable, sdij the parliament ; and therefore, /rom 
necessity we must legislate for them. Such our claim. 
No, reply the Colonists ; there is an alternative in the 



125 

carie, and rightful for us to avail ourselves of it ; to 
separate from you, and form representative govern- 
ments of our own. Such our counter-claim* 

This statement of the question results in a distinct 
and complete issue in laio between the parties ; and, 
if so, does it not follow, that the instrument^ the formal 
annunciation of the independence, usually known 
as the declaration of it, is hiisconceived ? Instead of 
leaving the controversy as resting on the merits of the 
claim, and counter-claim, of right, abstracted from 
fact, there being none in question between the par- 
ties, it enumerates a series of acts on the part of the 
government of the parent State, some by the King, 
separately, as in the exercise of his prerogative, others 
as conjunctly with the other two branches of the 
legislature, the whole charged as oppressions, and the 
King thereupon denounced a tyrant. Admitting 
them, for the sake of the argument, still they being 
with intent to enforce the claim, or overt-acts of it, 
they aught alike to have been resisted, even if as un- 
detrimental as an entry on lands to preserve a right. 
As proof they would have been resisted, take the fol- 
lowing, from the address of the first Congress, to the 
people of Great Britain : " Know then, that we con- 
sider ourselves, and do insist that we are, and ought to 
be, as free as our fellow-subjects in Britain; and that 
710 power on earth has a right to take our property from 
us without our consenf'^ — " that we will never submit to 
be hewers of wood or drawers of water for any ministry 
or nation in the world j'^'* and, to add to the solemnity 
of the asseveration of claim, the language of the 
Volume of the Book selected to express it. The 
whole pecuharly bespeaking the character of the indi« 
vidual who prepared it, John Jay. It was not possi- 
ble for us to recede, and no calculation our adversa- 
ries would not persist. Such the spirit of 1774, to 
correct the anachronism of 1776. 



126 

According to the general tenor, however, of the 
declaratioji, the actual oppressions charged in it, are 
made the cause, and to adopt its diction, '' for decla- 
ring ourselves absolved from all allegiance to the 
British Crown, and that all political connection 
between us and the State of Great Britain is and 
aught to be dissolved;" or, in a word, the cause 
of the Revolution; thereby not only placing it on 
other than its simple true ground ; but also obviously 
detracting from the merit of it. Abject those not 
resisting oppression; degrees more so, if the op- 
pressor an individual tyrant. The reptile will turn 
when trodden on. In short, if the statement here 
of the precise principle, or the point, of the Revo- 
lution, correct, then how much of the preamhh to 
the declaration might not have been spared. Pub- 
licly reading it has become a part of the ceremonial 
when assembled to celebrate the anniversary of it. 
Introduced by the Tammany Society or, Columbian 
Order when instituted in 1787. The Memoir asserts 
the liberty of the Revolution an " original liberty. 
What would we think of one, entitled to hold by 
prescription, still insisting to hold by grant, and have 
it annually publicly proclaimed as his origin of 
right ? But is there not a farther, and more serious, 
question here; and to be hoped hitherto not per- 
ceived ? This formula not known during the war 
for the Independence. The treaty of peace put 
an end to the struggle. Now the question: Did 
it not also, as from its very nature, impose it on 
the parties as a mutual duty between them, an 
OBLIVION of aggression; or, in the diction of the 
DIVINE pacificator, " a forgiveness of tres- 

PASSES ?" 



127 



No. XX — Page 83. 



A CcELEBS myself, and recommending the eur- 
^e.^ search for a wife! Is the hand, the pointer, 
less to be heeded, when showing the right road to 
others, because itself not going it? Neither will I 
suppose the adage obsolete; " Jstihil dulcius amico 
monitor e,^^ 



Epitaph of Prior, the poet, by himself, in the 
teign of Wilham the third: 

" Nobles and Heralds by your leave, 

I rr.?^^® ^*^^ ^^^* °"^ ^^s Matthew Prior : 

* The son of Adam and of Eve, 

Let Bourbon or Nassau go hi^hei .*" 



FINIS. 






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CORRECTIONS. 

Page 27, line 1, the wanting between in and Diii'/n 
31, 20, Antonio to be Antonia. 

39, 8, Aufscher to be Aufscher. 

40, 6, convent to be convert. 
55, 17, Dafs to be DaZs. 

55, 28, Fonteyn to be Fonteyne«. 

68, 5, mentionerf to be mention. 

70, 15, form to be from. 

75, 3, their to be there. 

7f). 22, Stadhny's to be Stad/hny'?. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



illlii I ii III \\\i iiii>>< 'ii 

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